www.Virginia
Here are the most useful websites for teaching Virginia 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.
(Note: Links will open in new window)
Been Here So Long: Selections from the WPA American Slave Narratives
Dick Parsons
These three lessons use the American Slave Narratives gathered between 1936 and 1938 by journalists and other writers employed by the Federal Writers Project, part of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA). The site supplies 17 narratives for student use and also provides information on online and printed sources for additional narratives (approximately 2,300 were collected). The lessons ask students to explore the slave narratives to gain an understanding of the experiences of African Americans in nineteenth-century America and to consider the nature of oral history and personal narratives as historical evidence. One lesson requires students to use selected slave narratives to construct a "Document Based Question" for fellow students to answer. The lessons are accompanied by an essay on "The Ex-Slave Interviews in the Depression Cultural Context." This activity comes from the New Deal Network Web site.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2002-05-30.
Red White Blue & Brimstone: New World Literature and the American Millennium
University of Virginia Library
An exhibit of 101 images with a 10,000-word essay that tracks the influence of the Book of Revelations' apocalyptic vision of history in shaping conceptions of America and its destiny for religious zealots and others from the colonial era to the present. With images primarily from published texts--covers, title pages, illustrations, and relevant pages of writing--the exhibit is divided into 14 chronological sections, each opening with a quote from Revelations and detailing its relevance in successive historical periods. The exhibit begins with the period of the English Reformation, when John Foxe's Book of Martyrs, exported to America, related contemporary political events to scripture and established a timeline that proved influential over the next 250 years. The site covers beliefs that American Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel; Cotton Mather's sermons as the culmination of a century of speculation about America's place in the apocalyptic scheme; early nationalist ambitions as fulfilling prophecy; and the influence of Revelations on Thomas Jefferson. The site also looks at William Miller's numerologically-based predictions of the end of the world in 1843; millennial movements in the antebellum era; urban exposés that conceived of American cities as present-day incarnations of Babylon; and 20th-century anti-Semitic thought. Well organized, the exhibit provides a useful introduction to students of American religion and culture of the persistence of the power of the Book of Revelations, but exaggerates its importance with the odd claim that no other book has "produced a more profound vision of America's hopes, duties, dreams, and destiny."
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-06.
Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929
American Memory, Library of Congress
This site presents more than 1,000 original panoramic maps, "a popular cartographic form" during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The maps, often prepared for civic organizations, such as chambers of commerce and real estate agents to promote an area's commercial potential, cover the contiguous 48 states and four Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Quebec between 1847 and 1929. While most of these maps were not drawn to scale, viewers can zoom in to find artists' renderings of individual streets, buildings, and landscape features. The site also includes a 1,200-word history of panoramic mapping; a bibliography comprised of 24 titles; and background essays (1,000 words) and images relating to five prominent panoramic artists: Albert Ruger (1829-1899); Thadeus Mortimer Fowler (1842-1922); Oakley H. Bailey (1843-1947); Lucien R. Burleigh (1853-1923); and Henry Wellge (1850-1917). This site is an excellent resource for those studying urbanization, cities, business growth, and the art of mapmaking.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-08.
Washington As It Was: Photographs by Theodor Horydczak, 1923-1959
American Memory, Library of Congress
Presents approximately 14,350 photographs by Theodor Horydczak (1890-1971), most of which document the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area between the 1920s and 1950s. Subjects include the architecture and interiors of government, commercial, and residential buildings; views of streets and neighborhoods; images of work and leisure; and events such as the 1932 Bonus March and the 1933 World Series. Also includes a limited number of shots taken in other U.S. locations and in Canada and a background essay, "Discovering Theodor Horydczak's Washington." Provides visual documentation of official and everyday life in the nation's capital and its environs.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-14.
The Digital Classroom
National Archives and Records Administration
A series of activities, primary documents, lesson plans, links, and worksheets designed to encourage "teachers of students at all levels to use archival documents in the classroom." Includes tasks to help students understand how to use National Archives materials; 20 thematically-oriented teaching activities covering the period from the Constitutional Convention to Watergate; detailed information about National History Day, an annual educational program and competition; and 35 lessons and activities organized around constitutional issues ranging from well-known patent cases to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the establishment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Many of the activities correlate to specific sections of the National History Standards and the National Standards for Civics and Government. Also contains a handful of links and material about books, workshops, and summer institutes for teachers. A well-organized introduction to the practice of historical research.
Resources Available: TEXT.
Website last visited on 2008-10-06.
Lewis and Clark: Maps of Exploration 1507-1814
Alderman Library, University of Virginia; Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation
This 1995 exhibition presents approximately 70 maps designed to help "understand [Thomas] Jefferson's views of the West and the nature of the quest to the Pacific," and to "show the evolution of cartographic knowledge of North America up to the time that [Meriwether] Lewis and [William] Clark set out." Arranged into five sections, it treats the period from the arrival of Columbus in North America to Lewis and Clark's 1803 voyage. Well-written background essays describe relevant monographs and journals, explain the role of technology in mapmaking, and elucidate the social and intellectual contexts of Western exploration. The site, which offers both European and American perspectives, also furnishes eight related links and a 31-title bibliography. Particularly useful for understanding the evolution of geographic knowledge about North America and for tracing the history of cartography during this period.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2008-10-06.
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.
The Declaration of Independence
National Archives and Records Administration
A transcription of the Declaration of Independence is accompanied by images of the original document and the 1823 William J. Stone engraving on this site. Three related texts--the Virginia Declaration of Rights and two scholarly articles--(approximately 8,000 words each) provide further context: one details the history of the Declaration and includes a bibliography of eight titles; the other examines its language and "stylistic artistry." Also includes links to two related institutional sites. See also http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/treasure/index.html.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES.
Website last visited on 2001-07-02.
American Slave Narratives
Bruce Fort, Ph.D. candidate, University of Virginia
This site contains selections from 13 interviews with former slaves conducted between 1936 and 1938 by journalists working for the New Deal Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. Each selection is accompanied by a brief biographical sketch of the interviewee, a photograph or drawing of the interviewee taken at the time of the interview, and in one instance, an audio component. Includes guidelines for reading slave narratives, a bibliography of 16 scholarly works on the history of slavery, and 21 links to related sites in general American history, southern history, and African-American history. A useful sample of first-hand testimony on American slave experience and culture.
Resources Available: TEXT, IMAGES, AUDIO.
Website last visited on 2008-10-09.
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.