The United States has a long history of activists seeking social, political, economic, and other changes to America—along with a history of other activists trying to prevent such changes. American activism covered a wide range of causes and utilized many different forms of activism. American sociopolitical activism became especially prominent during the period of societal upheaval which began during the 1950s. The African American civil rights movement led the way, soon followed by a substantial anti-war movement opposing American involvement in the Vietnam War, and later by vigorous activism involving women’s issues, gay rights, and other causes. The United States remains a land of nearly constant change, and activists play a significant role in the ongoing evolution of American democracy. It seems likely that Americans will remain enthusiastic activists in the future. This exhibition is part of the Digital Library of Georgia.

In this lesson students learn how Birth of a Nation reflected and influenced racial attitudes, and they analyze and evaluate the efforts of the NAACP to prohibit showing of the film.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the creation of the US Constitution. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

This lesson plan looks at the major ideas in the Declaration of Independence, their origins, the Americans' key grievances against the King and Parliament, their assertion of sovereignty, and the Declaration's process of revision.

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Equal Rights Amendment. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to related resources, and a teaching guide. These sets were created and reviewed by the teachers on the DPLA's Education Advisory Committee.

Practice working with primary documents by comparing accounts of the Chicago Fire and testing the credibility of a Civil War diary.

Teach Immigration History from the University of Texas at Austin explains the important and complicated history of immigration to the United States for general audiences and high school teachers of U.S. history and civics courses.  The backbone of the website is an 80-item chronology of key events, laws, and court rulings that are further explained by a dozen thematic lesson plans on topics such as citizenship, an overview of major laws, gender and immigration, and migration within the Americas.

Alternative facts, fake news, and post-truth have become common terms in the contemporary news industry. Today, social media platforms allow sensational news to “go viral,” crowdsourced news from ordinary people to compete with professional reporting, and public figures in offices as high as the US presidency to bypass established media outlets when sharing news. However, dramatic reporting in daily news coverage predates the smartphone and tablet by over a century. In the late nineteenth century, the news media war between Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal resulted in the rise of yellow journalism, as each newspaper used sensationalism and manipulated facts to increase sales and attract readers.

Give students some freedom, but provide a reasonable workflow with this Genius Hour Workflow HyperDoc.  Also included, a model to help students understand that this is not just free time and that they are expected to master, create, learn, innovate, produce, and maybe even serve.

Lesson Plan for a Constitution Scavenger Hunt.Students will engage in discussion about the organization and importance of the Constitution. After, students will be given the Scavenger Hunt and, using a copy of the Constitution, answer all questions going through each Article. The Scavenger Hunt goes over basic information within the Cconstitution. Follow-up lessons could go into deeper, higher level inquiry.Includes Lesson Plan outline as well as Google Doc/PDF attachments of the Scavenger Hunt.

Students research archival material to examine nineteenth and early twentieth century arguments for and against women's suffrage.