Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
A Different Perspective on Slavery: Writing the History of African American Enslaved Women
New ReviewStudents examine the experiences of African-American women during the Civil War. Reading letters and autobiographies, they gain insight into how they dealt with slavery and losing their children. They create a model to evaluate the...
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Women Abolitionists
New ReviewStudents examine the role of women abolitionists during the Civil War. Using essays and biographies, they try to identify the race and class of the different women activists and determine the expectations of the genders during this time....
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Harriet Beecher Stowe Sends Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Victoria and Albert, 1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe's plea for abolition is not only laid plain in her acclaimed novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, but in her written correspondence as well. High schoolers read a letter written by Stowe to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria to...
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Document Analysis: The Mayflower Compact
Here's a great comprehension worksheet that models for young readers how to focus on short sections of a complicated text and then to create a summary of the entire document based on their understanding of the sections.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Slave Narratives: Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and the Columbian Orator
Young historians practice in-depth, quality analysis of primary source texts in this three-lesson unit, which examines excerpts from the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Caleb Bingham.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Women's Suffrage: 140 Years of Struggle
Young scholars create PowerPoint presentations about women's suffrage. In this women's rights instructional activity, students use primary documents to study the women's suffrage movement. In pairs, young scholars create a PowerPoint...