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American Revolution Educational History and Genealogy of the late 1700s in Colonial America

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Quizlet has study tools to help you learn anything. Improve your grades and reach your goals with flashcards, practice tests and expert-written solutions today.

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Colonial Government | Library Category | Teaching American History

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Agreement Between the Settlers at New Plymouth

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Teaching American History is a free resource that brings together primary documents, continuing education, and community for American history teachers.

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Best U.S. History Web Sites

Library of Congress
An outstanding and invaluable site for American history and general studies. Contains primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings and motion pictures. The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contains the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well. The Library of Congress also offers a Learning Page that provides activities, tools, ideas, and features for educators and students.

The Library of Congress American Memory in particular is an outstanding resource for American history and general studies. Included are multimedia collections of photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and digitized text. Use the Teachers section to explore primary set collections and themed resources. Teachers can get updates on new tools, professional development opportunities, and Library programs, events and services.

The Library of Congress: Teachers
The new Library of Congress Teachers page provides tools and resources for using Library of Congress primary source documents in the classroom and include excellent lesson plans, document analysis tools, online and offline activities, timelines, presentations and professional development resources.

Center for History and New Media: History Matters
A production of the American Social History Project/Center of Media and Learning, City of University New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, History Matters is a wonderful online resource for history teachers and students. Among the many digital resources are lesson plans, syllabi, links, and exhibits. The Center for History and New Media's resources include a list of "best" web sites, links to syllabi and lesson plans, essays on history and new media, a link to their excellent History Matters web site for U.S. History, and more. The CHNM History News Network is a weekly web-based magazine that features articles by various historians. Resources are designed to benefit professional historians, high school teachers, and students of history.

Teaching American History
This is a wonderful collection of thoughtful and thorough lesson plans and other resources on teaching American history. Each project was created by teachers in Virginia at a Center for History and New Media workshop. All projects include a variety of lesson plans and resources, and some even offer instructional videos on source analysis. The lesson plans cover a range of topics in American history and utilize interesting and engaging sources, activities, discussion questions, and assessments. Take your time browsing-there are many to choose from.

National Archives and Records Administration
The NARA offers federal archives, exhibits, classroom resources, census records, Hot Topics, and more. In addition to its paper holdings (which would circle the Earth 57 times) it has more than 3.5 billion electronic records. Users can research people, places, events and other popular topics of interest, as well as ancestry and military records. There are also features exhibits drawing from many of the NARA's popular sources. Among the most requested holdings are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, WWII photos, and the Bill of Rights.

The National Archives: Teachers' Resources
The National Archives Lesson Plans section contains incorporates U.S. primary documents and its excellent teaching activities correlate to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government. Lessons are organized by chronological era, from 1754 to the present.

Digital Vaults
The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults is an interactive exploration of history that examines thousands of documents, photographs, and pieces of history that have been integrated in a digital format. Upon entering the homepage, the user is given eight random archives to choose from. Clicking on one will give a description and a brief history of that archive, as well as displays a large variety of similar archives. The user has the ability to shuffle, rearrange, collect, and explore archives, as well as search for specific points in history using a keyword search. Although a lack of initial organization or index might seem overwhelming, Digital Vaults is a wonderfully imaginative resource for exploring history in a digitally compiled way.

Teach Docs
With DocsTeach, educators can create interactive history activities that incorporate more than 3,000 primary-source materials in a variety of media from the National Archives. Tools on the site are designed to teach critical thinking skills and integrate interactive elements such as puzzles, maps, and charts.

Our Documents
Offers 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings, that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965. Features a teacher's toolbox and competitions for students and teachers.

PBS Online
A great source for information on a myriad of historical events and personalities. PBS's assorted and diverse web exhibits supplement their television series and generally include a summary of each episode, interviews (often with sound bites), a timeline, primary sources, a glossary, photos, maps, and links to relevant sites. PBS productions include American Experience, Frontline and People's Century. Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities - arranged by topic.

PBS Teacher Source
Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities - arranged by topic and grade level - and sign up for their newsletter. Categories include American History, World History, History on Television, and Biographies. Many lessons incorporate primary sources. Some lessons require viewing PBS video, but many do not.

Smithsonian Education
The Smithsonian Education site is divided simply into three main categories: Educators, Families, and Students. The Educators section is keyword searchable and features lesson plans - many pertaining to history. The Students section features an interactive "Secrets of the Smithsonian" that teaches about the special collections at the Smithsonian.

The Price of Freedom: Americans at War
This Smithsonian website skillfully integrates Flash video and text to examine armed conflicts involving the U.S. from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq. Each conflict contains a brief video clip, statistical information, and a set of artifacts. There is also a Civil War mystery, an exhibition self-guide, and a teacher's guide. The New American Roles (1899-present) section contains an introductory movie and short essay on the conflict as well as historic images and artifacts.

Edsitement - The Best of the Humanities on the Web
EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities. All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. This impressive site features reviewed links to top sites, professionally developed lesson plans, classroom activities, materials to help with daily classroom planning, and search engines. You can search lesson plans by subcategory and grade level; middle school lessons are the most numerous.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There is much quality material for art students, educators, and enthusiasts at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art web site. Start with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History, a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world. Each timeline page includes representative art from the Museum's collection, a chart of time periods, a map of the region, an overview, and a list of key events. The timelines - accompanied by world, regional, and sub-regional maps - provide a linear outline of art history, and allow visitors to compare and contrast art from around the globe at any time in history. There is plenty more here apart from the Timeline: "Just for Fun" has interactive activities for kids, "A Closer Look" examines the "hows and whys" behind Met objects (such as George Washington Crossing the Delaware), "Artist" enables visitors to access biographical materials on a selection of artists as well as general information about their work, and "Themes and Cultures" presents past and present cultures with special features on the Met's collections and exhibitions.

C-SPAN in the Classroom
Access C-SPAN's complete program archives including all videos. C-SPAN in the Classroom is a free membership service that offers information and resources to assist educators in their use of primary source, public affairs video from C-SPAN television. You do not have to be a member to use C-SPAN online resources in your classroom, but membership includes access to teaching ideas, activities and classroom tools.

Digital History
This impressive site from Steven Mintz at the University of Houston includes an up-to-date U.S. history textbook; annotated primary sources on United States, Mexican American, and Native American history, and slavery; and succinct essays on the history of ethnicity and immigration, film, private life, and science and technology. Visual histories of Lincoln's America and America's Reconstruction contain text by Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney. The Doing History feature lets users reconstruct the past through the voices of children, gravestones, advertising, and other primary sources. Reference resources include classroom handouts, chronologies, encyclopedia articles, glossaries, and an audio-visual archive including speeches, book talks and e-lectures by historians, and historical maps, music, newspaper articles, and images. The site's Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians.

Civil Rights Special Collection
The Teachers' Domain Civil Rights Collection is produced by WGBH Boston, in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Washington University in St. Louis. Materials are free but you have to sign up. Features an impressive array of audio, video, and text sources from Frontline and American Experience shows, Eyes on the Prize, and other sources. Also offers an interactive Civil Rights movement timeline and four lesson plans: Campaigns for Economic Freedom/Re-Examining Brown/Taking a Stand/Understanding White Supremacy.

Science and Technology of World War II
Some of the most impressive technology advancements of the modern era occurred during World War II and the National World War II Memorial has 8000 objects directly related to science and technology. This impressive exhibit contains an animated timeline, activities (such as sending encrypted messages), expert audio responses to science and technology questions, lesson plans, a quiz, essays, and more. An impressive presentation.

Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008
Voting America examines long-term patterns in presidential election politics in the United States from the 1840s to today as well as some patterns in recent congressional election politics. The project offers a wide spectrum of animated and interactive visualizations of how Americans voted in elections over the past 168 years. The visualizations can be used to explore individual elections beyond the state level down to individual counties, which allows for more sophisticated analysis. The interactive maps highlight just how important third parties have played in American political history. You can also find expert analysis and commentary videos that discuss some of the most interesting and significant trends in American political history.

Do History: Martha Ballard
DoHistory invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and PBS film A Midwife's Tale, which were both based upon the remarkable 200 year old diary of midwife/healer Martha Ballard. There are thousands of downloadable pages from original documents: diaries, letters, maps, court records, town records, and more as well as a searchable copy of the twenty-seven year diary of Martha Ballard. DoHistory engages users interactively with historical documents and artifacts from the past and introduces visitors to the pivotal questions and issues raised when "doing" history. DoHistory was developed and maintained by the Film Study Center at Harvard University and is hosted and maintained by the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.

The Valley of the Shadows
The Valley of the Shadow depicts two communities, one Northern and one Southern, through the experience of the American Civil War. The project focuses on Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and it presents a hypermedia archive of thousands of sources that creates a social history of the coming, fighting, and aftermath of the Civil War. Those sources include newspapers, letters, diaries, photographs, maps, church records, population census, agricultural census, and military records. Students can explore the conflict and write their own histories or reconstruct the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families. The project is intended for secondary schools, community colleges, libraries, and universities.

Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704
The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts has launched a rich and impressive website that focuses on the 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, with the goal of commemorating and reinterpreting the event from the perspectives of all the cultural groups who were present - Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, French, and English. The website brings together many resources - historical scenes, stories of people's lives, historical artifacts and documents, essays, voices and songs, historical maps, and a timeline - to illuminate broad and competing perspectives on this dramatic event.

Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition
The Missouri Historical Society has developed an extensive award-winning web site and web-based curriculum developed to complement their Lewis and Clark, The National Bicentinnal Exhibiton. Written for grades 4-12, the units focus on nine major themes of the exhibit and feature hundreds of primary sources from the exhibit. The curriculum uses the Lewis and Clark expedition as case studies for larger themes such as Diplomacy, Mapping, Animals, Language, and Trade and Property. It presents both the Euro-American perspective and a particular Native American perspective. The online exhibit has two sections. One is a thematic approach that highlights the content from the main galleries of the exhibit. The other is a map-based journey that follows the expedition and introduces primary sources along the way, including interviews with present-day Native Americans.

The Sport of Life and Death
The Sport of Life and Death was voted Best Overall Site for 2002 by Museums and the Web and has won a slew of other web awards. The site is based on a traveling exhibition now showing at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey and bills itself as "an online journey into the ancient spectacle of athletes and gods." The Sport of Life and Death features dazzling special effects courtesy of Macromedia Flash technology and its overall layout and organization are superb. There are helpful interactive maps, timelines, and samples of artwork in the Explore the Mesoamerican World section. The focus of the site, however, is the Mesoamerican ballgame, the oldest organized sport in history. The sport is explained through a beautiful and engaging combination of images, text, expert commentary, and video. Visitors can even compete in a contest!

The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory
A first-rate exhibition created by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University. There are two major parts: the history of Chicago in the 19th century, and how the Chicago Fire has been remembered over time. Included are essays, galleries, and sources.

Technology in the U.S. History in the Classroom

Here are some creative, engaging and technology-infused lessons & web sites on U.S. History:

"Day in Life of Hobo" podcast
This interdisciplinary creative writing/historical simulation activity incorporates blogging and podcasting and calls on students to research the plight of homeless teenagers during the Great Depression and then create their own fictionalized account of a day in the life of a Hobo. This project will be featured in the spring edition of Social Education, published by the National Council of Social Studies.

"Telling Their Stories" - Oral History Archive Project of the Urban School
Visit "Telling Their Stories" and read, watch, and listen to perhaps the best student-created oral history project in the country. High School students at the Urban School of San Francisco have produced three impressive oral history interviews featured at this site: Holocaust Survivors and Refugees, World War II Camp Liberators, and Japanese-American Internees. Urban school students conducted, filmed, and transcribed interviews, created hundreds of movie files associated with each transcript, and then posted the full-text, full-video interviews on this public website. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) has recognized Urban School's Telling Their Stories project with a Leading Edge Recognition award for excellence in technology integration. Teachers interested in conducting an oral history project can contact Urban School technology director Howard Levin and should consider attending his summer teacher workshop.

Student News Action Network
This student-produced current events journal features contributions from around the world and is led by five student-bureaus: The American School of Doha, Bishops Diocesan College, International School Bangkok, International School of Luxembourg, and Washington International School. The students have cleverly adopted the free Ning platform and far-flung students work collaboratively to create an interactive, multimedia-rich, and student-driven online newspaper.

"Great Debate of 2008"
Tom Daccord created a wiki and a private online social network for the "Great Debate of 2008" project, a student exploration and discussion of issues and candidates surrounding the 2008 presidential election. The project connected students around the country in a wiki and a private online social network to share information and ideas related to the 2008 presidential election. Students post information on campaign issues to the wiki and partake in online discussions and survey with other students in the private online social network.

The Flat Classroom Project
The award-winning Flat Classroom project brings together high school and middle school students from around the world to explore the ideas presented in Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat. These collaborative projects harness the most powerful Web 2.0 tools available including wikis, online social networks, digital storytelling, podcasts, social bookmarking, and more.

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Library of Congress An outstanding and invaluable site for American history and general studies. Contains primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings and motion pictures. The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contains the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well.

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WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

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WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

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WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

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WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

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WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

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WWW.History

This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers. Information is provided on the type of website (Archive, Electronic Essay, Gateway, Journal, Organization, Syllabi/Assignments) and the type of resource (text, images, audio, and video). Browse sites by topic and time period or look through a list of some of our favorite sites on this page. The full search feature allows you to quickly locate WWW.History resources by topic, time period, keyword, or type.

WWW.History by Topic and Time Period

History Web Reviews from the
Journal of American History

Visit the web review archive.

Our Favorite Websites

American Studies Crossroads Project
American Studies Association.
This impressive site presents a rich array of primary and secondary material designed to foster electronic learning. The site's "Reference and Research" section furnishes an annotated, searchable gateway to hundreds of links dealing generally with American history and life, including SiteScene, a biweekly journal that reviews websites, texts of recent articles published in American Quarterly; abstracts of American Studies dissertations from 1986 to 1999, organized alphabetically by author; and links to image and document archives. Three additional sections--entitled "Community," "Curriculum," and "Technology and Learning"--offer a wealth of material concerning developments in the field of American Studies and teaching with new technologies, including essays, syllabi, bulletin boards, and newsletters.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2002-10-28.

Making of America
University of Michigan.
This site is a "digital library" of thousands of primary documents in American social history from the Antebellum period through Reconstruction. The result of a collaborative project between the University of Michigan and Cornell University, begun in 1995, it currently offers more than 3 million pages of text from 11,063 volumes and 50,000 journal articles. Includes 10 major 19th-century journals--like Appleton's from 1869 to 1881, the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1864, Ladies Repository from 1841 to 1876, and DeBow's from 1846 to 1869 -- as well as novels and tracts important for understanding the development of American education, sociology, history, religion, psychology, and science. A recent addition includes 249 volumes on New York City, some from the early 20th century. Searchable by word or phrase, the site provides a complete bibliography of books and journals, organized by author. Well-designed and executed, this is an excellent collection of material.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-09-19.

Documenting the American South
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries.
This database presents nearly 1,400 primary documents about the American South in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Culled from the premier collections at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC), the database features ten major projects. Presenting the beginnings of the University of North Carolina, "The First Century of the First State University," offers "materials that document the creation and growth" of the University. "Oral Histories of th American South" has made 500 oral history interviews on the civil rights, environmental, industrial, and political history of the South. First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 offers approximately 140 diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives, and concentrates on women, blacks, workers, and American Indians. (See separate History Matters entry for more details.) "North American Slave Narratives" also furnishes about 250 texts. And the "Library of Southern Literature" makes available an additional 51 titles in Southern literature. "The Church in the Southern Black Community, Beginnings to 1920," traces "how Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life." "The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865" documents "non-military aspects of Southern life during the Civil War." The North Carolina Experience, Beginnings to 1940 provides approximately 575 histories, descriptive accounts, institutional reports, works of fiction, images, oral histories, and songs. North Carolinians and the Great War offers approximately 170 documents on effects of World War I and its legacy. Finally, "True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina" analyzes 121 documents written by students attending the University of North Carolina. The projects are accompanied by essays from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and are searchable by author, keyword, and title. They reflect a larger effort, begun in 1995, to digitize the Southern collections at UNC.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
Edward L. Ayers, Anne S. Rubin, William G. Thomas, University of Virginia.
Conceived by Edward Ayers, Hugh P. Kelley Professor of History at the University of Virginia, this site is a massive, searchable archive relating to two Shenandoah Valley counties during the Civil War period--Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania--divided by 200 miles and the institution of slavery. Thousands of pages of maps, images, letters, diaries, and newspapers, in addition to church, agricultural, military, and public records--census, tax, Freedmen�s Bureau, and veterans�-provide data, experiences, and perspectives from the eve of the war until its aftermath. Offers both a narrative "walking tour" and direct access to the archive. Also presents bibliographies, a "fact book," student essays and projects, and other materials intended to foster primary-source research. "Students can explore every dimension of the conflict and write their own histories, reconstructing the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families." Includes a section titled �Memory of the War� that presents postwar writings on battles, soldier and camp life, reunions, obituaries and tributes, and politics. Also includes material omitted from Ayres's recent book about the communities, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, along with digitized texts of cited materials. This is an important and innovative site, particularly valuable to historians of 19th-century American life.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Oyez: U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University.
Features audio files, abstracts, transcriptions of oral arguments, and written opinions on more than 3,300 Supreme Court cases. Includes more than 3,000 hours of audio of arguments in selected cases going back to 1955 and all cases since 1995. Users can access cases through keyword searches or a list of 13 broad categories, including civil rights, due process, first amendment, judicial power, privacy, and unions. Also provides easy access to the 20 most popular cases--such as Roe v. Wade (abortion), Gideon v. Wainwright (right to counsel), Plessy v. Ferguson (segregation), Grutter v. Bollinger (racial preferences in school admissions decisions), and Bush v. Gore-- determined by numbers of hits to the site. Also offers images and biographical outlines for every justice who has served on the Court. "The Pending Docket" provides briefs of pending cases, along with links to relevant opinions; additional material on selected cases; a summary highlighting cases decided in the previous session with a breakdown of the voting of individual justices; and a forum for discussions of selected recent cases. The site also includes a "virtual tour" of the Court building; links to all the written opinions of the Court since 1893; and audio of speeches by a handful of justices. Of great value for those practicing law and studying its history.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-18.

Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Resources for Teachers
The U.S. Department of Education's National Library of Education and ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology.
An annotated gateway to thousands of online lesson plans, curriculum units, and other teaching resources in subjects such as history, art, religion, social studies, economics, and gender studies. Organized according to six sections: Education News; K-12 Instruction; Health Resources; Teacher Development; Lesson Plans; and Teaching with Technology. Furnished by ERIC, "a federally funded, nationwide information network designed to provide you with ready access to education literature." Linked to the main ERIC site Educational Resources Information Center, which offers resources in 15 additional clearinghouses, all feeding into "the largest education-related database in the world--containing more than 1,000,000 records of journal articles, research reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books," to which some 33,000 new records are added annually. Both the main site and this one specializing in teaching resources are searchable. They are of exceptional value to teachers in all disciplines. U.S. history teachers will find more than 20 gateway sites for lesson plans that use the Web to help students explore topics and periods in American history. Materials also encourage students to appreciate the value of studying the past through activities that involve them personally, such as connecting family history with larger narratives and conducting oral histories with older people they know.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2001-08-01.

Ad*Access
Digital Scriptorium, Duke University.
This well-developed, easily navigated site presents images and database information for more than 7,000 advertisements printed primarily in the United States from 1911 to 1955. Material is drawn from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. The advertisements are divided into 5 main subjects areas: Radio (including radios, radio parts, and radio programs); Television (including television sets and programs); Transportation (including airlines, rental cars, buses, trains, and ships); Beauty and Hygiene (including cosmetics, soaps, and shaving supplies); and World War II (U.S. Government ads, such as V-mail or bond drives). The ads are searchable by keyword, type of illustration, and special features. A timeline from 1915 to 1955 provides general context for the ads with a chronology of major events. "About Ad Access" provides an overview of advertising history and the Duke collection, as well as a bibliography and list of advertising repositories in the U.S. Excellent archive of primary documents for students of consumer and popular culture.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-10.

Famous Trials
Douglas Linder, Professor of Law, University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Law professor Douglas Linder created this exceptional legal history site. It includes fascinating treatments of over 50 of the most prominent court trials in American history, including: Scopes "Monkey" Trial (1925); Rosenberg Trial (1951); Leopold and Loeb Trial (1924); Salem Witchcraft Trials (1692); Scottsboro Trials (1931-1937); Bill Haywood Trial (1907); My Lai Courts Martial (1970); Nuremberg Trials (1945-49); Dakota Conflict Trials (1862); Mississippi Burning Trial (1967); Chicago Seven Conspiracy (1969-70); Johnson Impeachment Trial (1868); O.J. Simpson Trial (1995); The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1895); Hauptmann (Lindbergh) Trial (1935); Sweet Trials (1925-1926); Amistad Trials (1839-1840); Sheriff Shipp Trial (1907-1909); Susan B. Anthony Trial (1873); the Sacco and Vanzetti Trial (1921); Clinton Impeachment Trial (1999); Moussaoui 9/11 Trial (2006); and the Black Sox Trial (1921). Most trial pages include a 750-1000-word essay on the historical background of the case, links to biographies (roughly 500 words) of key figures in the trials, and approximately 15-25 primary documents related to each trial, including transcripts of testimony, media coverage, depositions, and government documents. Cases also contain images, links to related websites, and a bibliography of scholarly works. There are also links to biographies of 5 "trial heroes," including famous trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and a "Exploring Constitutional Law" site that offers 83 important constitutional topics for class discussion, such as gay rights, student searches, and the electoral college debates. Each topic includes a 250-300-word introduction to the issue and links to roughly ten related primary documents and court opinions. These topics are designed for classroom use and include issue questions for discussion. Another link explores the Supreme Court and includes items such as biographies of past and present justices, a virtual tour of the Supreme Court building, and a term calendar. Three interactive learning sites on the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers are also offered. This exceptional site can serve as a valuable resource for studying many aspects of legal and constitutional history.
Listen to the audio review:
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Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-10-11.

Do History: Martha Ballard's Diary Online
Film Study Center, Harvard University.
Developed by the Film Study Center at Harvard University, this site is an experimental, interactive case study that explores the remarkable 18th-century diary of midwife Martha Ballard. The site demonstrates how historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich pieced together the diary within a broader historical context to write the book A Midwife's Tale and offers a behind-the-scenes tour with filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of the film version, also called A Midwife's Tale. The site offers two versions of the 1400-page diary, facsimile and transcribed full-text; the latter is searchable by keyword and date. An archive offers images of nearly 50 documents on such topics as Ballard's life, domestic life, law and justice, finance and commerce, geography and surveying, midwifery and birth, medical information, religion, and Maine history. It is searchable by document type, topic, author, and title. Also included are maps of North America (1795), Maine (1799), and Hallowell, Maine (1794); images of Augusta and Hallowell Maine; and a walking tour of Hallowell, Maine. A timeline traces Maine's history from the first attempt to settle the coastline in 1607, through Ballard's lifetime (1735-1812), to the 1997 release of the film A Midwife's Tale. Interactive exercises offer students the opportunity to transcribe and "decode" portions of the diary, and a "Magic Lens" makes it appear as if Ballard's handwriting is instantly transcribed. A drop-down menu offers suggestions on ways to use the site for conducting research on genealogy, midwifery and herbal medicine, and diaries, as well as for using primary sources. Of particular interest is a section on teaching with this Website, which includes 15 ideas for classroom activities and suggestions on how to customize the activities for different grade levels, as well as links to the teacher guides developed for the PBS film. 2 "Doing History" exercises allow visitors to build a story around Ballard's notes about 2 controversies. The "On Your Own" section helps "beginning historians" organize and conduct research with ten 500- to 750-word essays describing the stages of a research project and offering step-by-step instructions on cultivating such research skills as reading 18th-century writing, reading probate records, searching for deeds, and exploring graveyards. There are also links to 5 additional Websites with further how-to information, a bibliography of over 125 related scholarly works, and 50 related websites. This rich site provides students and teachers with an ideal case study of the work involved in "piecing together the past."
Listen to the audio review based on the JAH web review by Jane Kamensky:
Your browser is unable to play the audio element. Try updating to the latest version of your browser.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, VIDEO.
Website last visited on 2007-10-24.

Wright American Fiction, 1851-1875
Committee on Institutional Cooperation; Indiana University Digital Library Program.
An ambitious attempt to digitize 19th century American fiction as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography, American Fiction, 1815-1875, this collection of texts is a work-in-progress. At present, the site offers 2,887 texts by 1,456 authors. Of these, 1,124 have been edited and SGML encoded so that users may access chapter and story divisions through table of contents hyperlinks. The remaining 1,763 texts have not been proofed, but still can be perused either as facsimiles of original pages or in unedited transcriptions. Most valuable is the ability to perform word searches on the whole database. A most valuable site for those studying American literature and popular culture of the 19th century.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2007-11-06.

The History of Jim Crow
Richard Wormhiser, Bill Jersey, Sam Pollard, WNET.
This site for educators was produced as an online companion to The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, a four-part television series that tells the story of the African-American struggle for freedom during the era of segregation. The site consists of five sections, including television, history, geography, American literature, and teacher resources. "Television" provides teachers with guides to four part, from the end of the Civil War to the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The history section contains six historical essays (each between 5,000 to 7,000 words), including the introductory essay "Terror to Triumph," and five themed essays focusing on creating, surviving, resisting, escaping, and transcending Jim Crow oppression from the late-19th-century to the Civil Rights movement. Additional shorter essays, most between 600 to 1,300 words, cover topics such as the lynching of Emmett Till and Jackie Robinson. "Geography" features ten interactive maps that give "a multi-layered look at the impact of Jim Crow on the social and political landscape of the nation." The map themes include African-American press, Jim Crow laws inside and outside the south, and most gripping of all, the riots and lynching map that portrays a representative selection of the thousands of recorded acts of violence that occurred across the United States from 1889 to 1918. The American literature section presents interdisciplinary lesson plans designed to illustrate the connection between Jim Crow and 20th-century American writing. This section also contains an American literature book list for middle school, high school, and college-level students, including units on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. The final section, teacher resources, offers more than 25 lesson plans, an interactive encyclopedia, an image gallery with historical photographs, and first hand narratives from people who experienced life under Jim Crow. This well organized and wonderfully equipped site is an invaluable resource for history and literature educators.
Resources Available: .
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.

National Postal Museum
Smithsonian Institution.
Divided into six galleries, this website features 21 online exhibits. The first gallery, Binding the Nation, includes six exhibits such as " The Post and the Press" and " Moving West" that explains how the postal service contracted with stagecoach lines to transport mail across the frontier. The second gallery, Customers and Communities, uses a series of exhibits to examine the development of mail delivery to the growing urban and rural populations in the 20th century. For example, through a virtual tour of the " Mail by Rail" visitors learn about the revolutionary Railway Mail Service. Moving the Mail is the third gallery, with three exhibits, and Art of Cards and Letters, the fourth gallery, spotlights the important role mail has held as a medium for personal communications, including " Undercover: The Evolution of the American Envelope." The fifth gallery, Artistic License comprises six exhibits and the last, the Philatelic Gallery, includes exhibits entitled " Rarities Vault" and " Inverts." This gallery also features changing exhibits featuring special objects from both the Museum and private collections, including an online version of " Mail to the Chief," a collection of original drawings by Franklin Roosevelt of the many stamps he designed. There are also two research guides online for the Benjamin B. Lipsner Airmail Collection and for the 1847 Federal Postage Stamp Correspondence. An Activity Zone offers materials for young students and free downloadable curriculum guides (grades K through college level) are available for teachers. The 24 online articles from , the National Postal Museum's membership magazine, complete this rich site.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2005-12-01.

Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People
Industry Canada.
This exhibit documents African Americans, freed and escaped slaves, who fought for the British during the Revolutionary War. This website tells the story of black Loyalists who were evacuated to Nova Scotia with illustrated vignettes, short biographies, a timeline, and descriptions and maps. "Our Story", one of five main sections, presents a short history of the experiences of the Black Loyalist in Nova Scotia. Divided into seven subsections, including Revolution, Exile, Arrival, Prejudice, Faith, Suffering, and Exodus, it discusses the significance of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation, the role of black communities in Nova Scotia, the prejudicial treatment African Americans endured, the role of churches, the Sierra Leone Company, and voyage to Freetown. "People" contains short biographies of 23 prominent Black Loyalists, religious leaders, and other influential settlers. "Communities" offers detailed descriptions and maps of four Black Loyalist communities. Perhaps the best component "Documents", designed to help users develop a sense of what life was like for Black Loyalists. Original documents have been transcribed, including several autobiographical accounts of the life of Black Loyalists written by both blacks and whites in Nova Scotia. There is an excellent collection of court records, official proclamations, personal letters, bills, survey records, land sales, and other official documents. John Clarkson's first person account (nearly 200 pages) of his voyage to Nova Scotia to recruit Black Christian settlers for Sierra Leone is one of the many excellent documents available. An interactive timeline offers a broad perspective and the resource page includes lists of secondary sources and related websites.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2003-07-17.

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WWW.History This feature is our annotated guide to the most useful websites for teaching U.S. history and social studies. We have carefully selected and screened each website for quality and provide a paragraph annotation that summarizes the site's content, notes its strengths and weaknesses, and emphasizes its utility for teachers.

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Best U.S. History Web Sites

Library of Congress
An outstanding and invaluable site for American history and general studies. Contains primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings and motion pictures. The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contains the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well. The Library of Congress also offers a Learning Page that provides activities, tools, ideas, and features for educators and students.

The Library of Congress American Memory in particular is an outstanding resource for American history and general studies. Included are multimedia collections of photographs, recorded sound, moving pictures, and digitized text. Use the Teachers section to explore primary set collections and themed resources. Teachers can get updates on new tools, professional development opportunities, and Library programs, events and services.

The Library of Congress: Teachers
The new Library of Congress Teachers page provides tools and resources for using Library of Congress primary source documents in the classroom and include excellent lesson plans, document analysis tools, online and offline activities, timelines, presentations and professional development resources.

Center for History and New Media: History Matters
A production of the American Social History Project/Center of Media and Learning, City of University New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, History Matters is a wonderful online resource for history teachers and students. Among the many digital resources are lesson plans, syllabi, links, and exhibits. The Center for History and New Media's resources include a list of "best" web sites, links to syllabi and lesson plans, essays on history and new media, a link to their excellent History Matters web site for U.S. History, and more. The CHNM History News Network is a weekly web-based magazine that features articles by various historians. Resources are designed to benefit professional historians, high school teachers, and students of history.

Teaching American History
This is a wonderful collection of thoughtful and thorough lesson plans and other resources on teaching American history. Each project was created by teachers in Virginia at a Center for History and New Media workshop. All projects include a variety of lesson plans and resources, and some even offer instructional videos on source analysis. The lesson plans cover a range of topics in American history and utilize interesting and engaging sources, activities, discussion questions, and assessments. Take your time browsing-there are many to choose from.

National Archives and Records Administration
The NARA offers federal archives, exhibits, classroom resources, census records, Hot Topics, and more. In addition to its paper holdings (which would circle the Earth 57 times) it has more than 3.5 billion electronic records. Users can research people, places, events and other popular topics of interest, as well as ancestry and military records. There are also features exhibits drawing from many of the NARA's popular sources. Among the most requested holdings are the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, WWII photos, and the Bill of Rights.

The National Archives: Teachers' Resources
The National Archives Lesson Plans section contains incorporates U.S. primary documents and its excellent teaching activities correlate to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government. Lessons are organized by chronological era, from 1754 to the present.

Digital Vaults
The National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults is an interactive exploration of history that examines thousands of documents, photographs, and pieces of history that have been integrated in a digital format. Upon entering the homepage, the user is given eight random archives to choose from. Clicking on one will give a description and a brief history of that archive, as well as displays a large variety of similar archives. The user has the ability to shuffle, rearrange, collect, and explore archives, as well as search for specific points in history using a keyword search. Although a lack of initial organization or index might seem overwhelming, Digital Vaults is a wonderfully imaginative resource for exploring history in a digitally compiled way.

Teach Docs
With DocsTeach, educators can create interactive history activities that incorporate more than 3,000 primary-source materials in a variety of media from the National Archives. Tools on the site are designed to teach critical thinking skills and integrate interactive elements such as puzzles, maps, and charts.

Our Documents
Offers 100 milestone documents, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, and drawn primarily from its nationwide holdings, that chronicle United States history from 1776 to 1965. Features a teacher's toolbox and competitions for students and teachers.

PBS Online
A great source for information on a myriad of historical events and personalities. PBS's assorted and diverse web exhibits supplement their television series and generally include a summary of each episode, interviews (often with sound bites), a timeline, primary sources, a glossary, photos, maps, and links to relevant sites. PBS productions include American Experience, Frontline and People's Century. Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities - arranged by topic.

PBS Teacher Source
Go to the PBS Teacher Source for lessons and activities - arranged by topic and grade level - and sign up for their newsletter. Categories include American History, World History, History on Television, and Biographies. Many lessons incorporate primary sources. Some lessons require viewing PBS video, but many do not.

Smithsonian Education
The Smithsonian Education site is divided simply into three main categories: Educators, Families, and Students. The Educators section is keyword searchable and features lesson plans - many pertaining to history. The Students section features an interactive "Secrets of the Smithsonian" that teaches about the special collections at the Smithsonian.

The Price of Freedom: Americans at War
This Smithsonian website skillfully integrates Flash video and text to examine armed conflicts involving the U.S. from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq. Each conflict contains a brief video clip, statistical information, and a set of artifacts. There is also a Civil War mystery, an exhibition self-guide, and a teacher's guide. The New American Roles (1899-present) section contains an introductory movie and short essay on the conflict as well as historic images and artifacts.

Edsitement - The Best of the Humanities on the Web
EDSITEment is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, Verizon Foundation, and the National Trust for the Humanities. All websites linked to EDSITEment have been reviewed for content, design, and educational impact in the classroom. This impressive site features reviewed links to top sites, professionally developed lesson plans, classroom activities, materials to help with daily classroom planning, and search engines. You can search lesson plans by subcategory and grade level; middle school lessons are the most numerous.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
There is much quality material for art students, educators, and enthusiasts at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art web site. Start with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History, a chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world. Each timeline page includes representative art from the Museum's collection, a chart of time periods, a map of the region, an overview, and a list of key events. The timelines - accompanied by world, regional, and sub-regional maps - provide a linear outline of art history, and allow visitors to compare and contrast art from around the globe at any time in history. There is plenty more here apart from the Timeline: "Just for Fun" has interactive activities for kids, "A Closer Look" examines the "hows and whys" behind Met objects (such as George Washington Crossing the Delaware), "Artist" enables visitors to access biographical materials on a selection of artists as well as general information about their work, and "Themes and Cultures" presents past and present cultures with special features on the Met's collections and exhibitions.

C-SPAN in the Classroom
Access C-SPAN's complete program archives including all videos. C-SPAN in the Classroom is a free membership service that offers information and resources to assist educators in their use of primary source, public affairs video from C-SPAN television. You do not have to be a member to use C-SPAN online resources in your classroom, but membership includes access to teaching ideas, activities and classroom tools.

Digital History
This impressive site from Steven Mintz at the University of Houston includes an up-to-date U.S. history textbook; annotated primary sources on United States, Mexican American, and Native American history, and slavery; and succinct essays on the history of ethnicity and immigration, film, private life, and science and technology. Visual histories of Lincoln's America and America's Reconstruction contain text by Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney. The Doing History feature lets users reconstruct the past through the voices of children, gravestones, advertising, and other primary sources. Reference resources include classroom handouts, chronologies, encyclopedia articles, glossaries, and an audio-visual archive including speeches, book talks and e-lectures by historians, and historical maps, music, newspaper articles, and images. The site's Ask the HyperHistorian feature allows users to pose questions to professional historians.

Civil Rights Special Collection
The Teachers' Domain Civil Rights Collection is produced by WGBH Boston, in partnership with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Washington University in St. Louis. Materials are free but you have to sign up. Features an impressive array of audio, video, and text sources from Frontline and American Experience shows, Eyes on the Prize, and other sources. Also offers an interactive Civil Rights movement timeline and four lesson plans: Campaigns for Economic Freedom/Re-Examining Brown/Taking a Stand/Understanding White Supremacy.

Science and Technology of World War II
Some of the most impressive technology advancements of the modern era occurred during World War II and the National World War II Memorial has 8000 objects directly related to science and technology. This impressive exhibit contains an animated timeline, activities (such as sending encrypted messages), expert audio responses to science and technology questions, lesson plans, a quiz, essays, and more. An impressive presentation.

Voting America: United States Politics, 1840-2008
Voting America examines long-term patterns in presidential election politics in the United States from the 1840s to today as well as some patterns in recent congressional election politics. The project offers a wide spectrum of animated and interactive visualizations of how Americans voted in elections over the past 168 years. The visualizations can be used to explore individual elections beyond the state level down to individual counties, which allows for more sophisticated analysis. The interactive maps highlight just how important third parties have played in American political history. You can also find expert analysis and commentary videos that discuss some of the most interesting and significant trends in American political history.

Do History: Martha Ballard
DoHistory invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and PBS film A Midwife's Tale, which were both based upon the remarkable 200 year old diary of midwife/healer Martha Ballard. There are thousands of downloadable pages from original documents: diaries, letters, maps, court records, town records, and more as well as a searchable copy of the twenty-seven year diary of Martha Ballard. DoHistory engages users interactively with historical documents and artifacts from the past and introduces visitors to the pivotal questions and issues raised when "doing" history. DoHistory was developed and maintained by the Film Study Center at Harvard University and is hosted and maintained by the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.

The Valley of the Shadows
The Valley of the Shadow depicts two communities, one Northern and one Southern, through the experience of the American Civil War. The project focuses on Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, and it presents a hypermedia archive of thousands of sources that creates a social history of the coming, fighting, and aftermath of the Civil War. Those sources include newspapers, letters, diaries, photographs, maps, church records, population census, agricultural census, and military records. Students can explore the conflict and write their own histories or reconstruct the life stories of women, African Americans, farmers, politicians, soldiers, and families. The project is intended for secondary schools, community colleges, libraries, and universities.

Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704
The Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association/Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, Massachusetts has launched a rich and impressive website that focuses on the 1704 raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, with the goal of commemorating and reinterpreting the event from the perspectives of all the cultural groups who were present - Mohawk, Abenaki, Huron, French, and English. The website brings together many resources - historical scenes, stories of people's lives, historical artifacts and documents, essays, voices and songs, historical maps, and a timeline - to illuminate broad and competing perspectives on this dramatic event.

Lewis and Clark: The National Bicentennial Exhibition
The Missouri Historical Society has developed an extensive award-winning web site and web-based curriculum developed to complement their Lewis and Clark, The National Bicentinnal Exhibiton. Written for grades 4-12, the units focus on nine major themes of the exhibit and feature hundreds of primary sources from the exhibit. The curriculum uses the Lewis and Clark expedition as case studies for larger themes such as Diplomacy, Mapping, Animals, Language, and Trade and Property. It presents both the Euro-American perspective and a particular Native American perspective. The online exhibit has two sections. One is a thematic approach that highlights the content from the main galleries of the exhibit. The other is a map-based journey that follows the expedition and introduces primary sources along the way, including interviews with present-day Native Americans.

The Sport of Life and Death
The Sport of Life and Death was voted Best Overall Site for 2002 by Museums and the Web and has won a slew of other web awards. The site is based on a traveling exhibition now showing at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey and bills itself as "an online journey into the ancient spectacle of athletes and gods." The Sport of Life and Death features dazzling special effects courtesy of Macromedia Flash technology and its overall layout and organization are superb. There are helpful interactive maps, timelines, and samples of artwork in the Explore the Mesoamerican World section. The focus of the site, however, is the Mesoamerican ballgame, the oldest organized sport in history. The sport is explained through a beautiful and engaging combination of images, text, expert commentary, and video. Visitors can even compete in a contest!

The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory
A first-rate exhibition created by the Chicago Historical Society and Northwestern University. There are two major parts: the history of Chicago in the 19th century, and how the Chicago Fire has been remembered over time. Included are essays, galleries, and sources.

Technology in the U.S. History in the Classroom

Here are some creative, engaging and technology-infused lessons & web sites on U.S. History:

"Day in Life of Hobo" podcast
This interdisciplinary creative writing/historical simulation activity incorporates blogging and podcasting and calls on students to research the plight of homeless teenagers during the Great Depression and then create their own fictionalized account of a day in the life of a Hobo. This project will be featured in the spring edition of Social Education, published by the National Council of Social Studies.

"Telling Their Stories" - Oral History Archive Project of the Urban School
Visit "Telling Their Stories" and read, watch, and listen to perhaps the best student-created oral history project in the country. High School students at the Urban School of San Francisco have produced three impressive oral history interviews featured at this site: Holocaust Survivors and Refugees, World War II Camp Liberators, and Japanese-American Internees. Urban school students conducted, filmed, and transcribed interviews, created hundreds of movie files associated with each transcript, and then posted the full-text, full-video interviews on this public website. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) has recognized Urban School's Telling Their Stories project with a Leading Edge Recognition award for excellence in technology integration. Teachers interested in conducting an oral history project can contact Urban School technology director Howard Levin and should consider attending his summer teacher workshop.

Student News Action Network
This student-produced current events journal features contributions from around the world and is led by five student-bureaus: The American School of Doha, Bishops Diocesan College, International School Bangkok, International School of Luxembourg, and Washington International School. The students have cleverly adopted the free Ning platform and far-flung students work collaboratively to create an interactive, multimedia-rich, and student-driven online newspaper.

"Great Debate of 2008"
Tom Daccord created a wiki and a private online social network for the "Great Debate of 2008" project, a student exploration and discussion of issues and candidates surrounding the 2008 presidential election. The project connected students around the country in a wiki and a private online social network to share information and ideas related to the 2008 presidential election. Students post information on campaign issues to the wiki and partake in online discussions and survey with other students in the private online social network.

The Flat Classroom Project
The award-winning Flat Classroom project brings together high school and middle school students from around the world to explore the ideas presented in Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat. These collaborative projects harness the most powerful Web 2.0 tools available including wikis, online social networks, digital storytelling, podcasts, social bookmarking, and more.

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Library of Congress An outstanding and invaluable site for American history and general studies. Contains primary and secondary documents, exhibits, map collections, prints and photographs, sound recordings and motion pictures. The Library of Congress American Memory Historical Collections, a must-see, contains the bulk of digitalized materials, but the Exhibitions Gallery is enticing and informative as well.

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