online history resources

The web provides an amazingly rich variety of print and non-print historical materials to enrich our understanding of U.S. history. The table below lists a number of websites that can expand your understanding of our course reading materials.

Please fill out an LTD Guide (download LTD Guide) for each of the assigned readings and bring it to class on the date indicated. For each reading, please review at least one related website.
Go to links for February and March 2005 readings.

Please note that all web resources will open in a new browser window so that this page will remain on your computer.

date due required readings recommended related web resources

W 1/5

Loewen, Intro: Something Has Gone Very Wrong and ch. 1 – Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making (1 LTD guide)

James Loewen's Univ. of Vermont website - read about the book and take the American History Quiz.

F 1/7

The class will meet in the Bldg. 98-C5-9 computer lab for help with Internet use and assignments. Note change - office hours will be in 94-333 from 9:30 - 10:50 AM.

M 1/10

Loewen, ch. 2 – 1493: The True Importance of Christopher Columbus

1492: An Ongoing Voyage - Exhibit examines the first sustained contacts between American people & European explorers, conquerors & settlers from 1492-1600.

Medieval Sourcebook: Christopher Columbus: Extracts from Journal - from the journal of Columbus in his voyage of 1492.

The Columbus Navigation Homepage - website explores "the history, navigation, and landfall of Christopher Columbus."

The Columbus Letter - announcing the success of his voyage to the "islands of the India sea." (1494)

W 1/12

Loewen, ch. 3: The Truth about the First Thanksgiving

MayflowerHistory.com - information about the Mayflower, the Pilgrims, the history of Thanksgiving, with links to full-text primary sources.

The Plymouth Colony Archive Project - court records, will, biographies, images, and more.

Beyond the Pilgrim Story - primary source documents, artifacts, and historical information from the Pilgrim Hall Museum.

Indians of North America - The Native American Experience, 1600-1750 - primary source illustrations from the time.

The Illustrating Traveler - Illustrated traveler's narratives and original art by travelers in the U.S. and Caribbean from 1760-1895.

F 1/14

Loewen, ch. 5 – “Gone with the Wind”: The Invisibility of Racism in American History Textbooks

The African-American Mosaic - Extensive Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture.

Chronology On The History Of Slavery And Racism - 1619-1789, 1790-1829, 1830 - the end

The Persistence of Spirit: African-American Experience in Arkansas - interpretive study of the black experience in Arkansas. Examine the Historical Narrative and Photo Scrapbook. (Note: photos enlarge when "clicked".)

M 1/17

Campus Closed
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday Observed

The Meaning of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday

W 1/19

Loewen, ch. 6 – John Brown and Abraham Lincoln: The Invisibility of Antiracism in American History Textbooks

"The New Negro" - Early 1960s NBC TV Open Mind Interview with Rev. Martin Luther King and Judge J. Waites Waring from The Internet Archives. (28 minutes)

A House Divided - America in the Age of Lincoln - examines Lincoln and his times, slavery, sectionalism, and the "destructive power of the Civil War."

History Guide from the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park - site of John Brown's attack on slavery.

John Brown and the Valley of the Shadow - links to a variety of primary sources.

People & Events - John Brown (1800 - 1859) - resources from PBS's Africans in America with some primary source documents.

F 1/21

Hollitz, ch. 1 – Historians and Textbooks: The “Story” of Reconstruction

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War - PBS American Experience website with TV program (viewable) and related primary and secondary sources.

Valley of the Shadows, Two Communities in the American Civil War - digital archive of life in one Augusta County Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania from 1859 through 1870.

African-American Pamphlets, 1880-1920:  Attitudes and ideas of African-Americans between Reconstruction and the First World War: the arts, ethnicity, religion, politics, war.

M 1/24

Woman’s Suffrage –a biographical perspective

Please read the web assignment about Victoria C. Woodhull and complete an LTD Guide for it.

W 1/26

Hollitz, ch. 2 – Using Primary Sources: Industrialization and the Condition of Labor

Working Women, 1870-1930 - extensive collection of digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources about women's role in the economy.

The Labor Project - documentary history of labor in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Collections of documents, photographs, personnel papers, and ephemera.

How the Other Half Lives: Hypertext of the 1890 Jacob Riis study of New York City tenement life, with many of the original photographs; see the table of contents for labor-related chapters.

Joe Hill: The Man Behind the Martyr - "the story of Joe Hill, a labor organizer executed by the state of Utah in 1915." Has biographical information and timeline; information on labor and the labor movement of the early twentieth century.

F 1/28

Loewen, ch. 7 – The Land of Opportunity

People Like Us: Social Class in America - companion site to PBS documentary.

Explorations in Social Inequality - overview of social inequality.

Social Class and Poverty: Allyn & Bacon links on class and poverty, homelessness, and hunger. Examine those you find of interest related to Loewen's chapter.

Wealth and Poverty: Hyper-text reading unit with articles about historic and contemporary perspectives on wealth and poverty, who's really on welfare, taxes and government spending.

M 1/31

Hollitz, ch. 3 – Evaluating Primary Sources: “Saving” the Indians in the late 19th Century

The Trail of Tears - information about Indian removal in the early 19th-century South.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School - website about the students who were educated in this Cumberland County school with a mission to "shape identity".

The Effects of Removal on American Indian Tribes - 7 parts (pages) including scholars' debate, illustrated, from the National Humanities Center.

The Avalon Project - 19th century Native American documents.

Buffalo Tales: The Near-Extermination of the
American Bison
, including scholars debate, illusttrated, with related online resources from the National Humanities Center.

Domestic Architecture in the Comanche Village on Medicine Creek, Indian Territory - William S. Soule's series of photographs of a Comanche village on Medicine Creek, Indian Territory, in the winter of 1872 - 1873.

go to February and March 2005 reading links

last updated February 1, 2005 / May 8, 2019
(Clearly some of these 2005 links may not work anymore. Such is the way of the web.)