Resource Library
Find compelling classroom resources, learn new teaching methods, meet standards, and make a difference in the lives of your students.
We are grateful to The Hammer Family Foundation for supporting the development of our on-demand learning and teaching resources.
Introducing Our US History Curriculum Collection
Draw from this flexible curriculum collection as you plan any middle or high school US history course. Featuring units, C3-style inquiries, and case studies, the collection will help you explore themes of democracy and freedom with your students throughout the year.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866
This is the full text of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which made freedpeople citizens.
Collaborators and Bystanders
Historian Eric Foner explains the various ways white Southerners showed support for the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction era.
Congress Debates the Fourteenth Amendment
Quotations from the 1866 congressional debate over the Fourteenth Amendment help students clarify what the amendment says and its significance.
A Day of Triumph
In an 1865 diary entry, Northerner Caroline Barrett White celebrates the Union’s victory and the end of the Civil War.
Election Day in Clinton, Mississippi (1875)
Eugene Welborne describes the attacks and intimidations on Black voters on Election Day in 1875.
Election Violence in Mississippi (1875)
Robert Gleeds, an African American candidate for sheriff in Lowndes County, Mississippi, describes the violence that occurred on the eve of the 1875 election.
Segregation: The Inner Conflict in the South
Southerners discuss segregation after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.
We Need to Talk About an Injustice
Read an excerpt from lawyer Bryan Stevenson’s inspiring TED Talk about the need to talk and teach about history to overcome injustice.
We Wear The Mask
In this poem, Paul Laurence Dunbar reflects on the experience of African Americans in post-Civil War America and the universal human behavior of hiding an aspect of ourselves.
The Fourteenth Amendment
This is the full text of the fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution, which granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” including former slaves recently freed.