Students use Library of Congress primary sources to examine how African-Americans in the Gilded Age were able to form a meaningful identity for themselves and reject the inferior images fastened upon them.

On 12 September 1787, during the final days of the Constitutional Convention, George Mason of Virginia expressed the desire that the Constitution be prefaced by a Bill of Rights. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts proposed a motion to form a committee to incorporate such a declaration of rights; however the motion was defeated. This lesson examines the First Congress's addition of a Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

This site includes documents from the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention and ratification debates, and the first two federal congresses. These documents record American history in the words of those who built our government.

The collection of documents brought together in this project begins to tell the story of the growth of Protestant religion among African Americans during the nineteenth century, and of the birth of what came to be known as the "Black Church" in the United States. This development continues to have enormous political, spiritual, and economic consequences. But perhaps what is most apparent in these texts is the diversity of ways in which that religious tradition was envisioned, experienced, and implemented. From the white Baptist and Methodist missionaries sent to convert enslaved Africans, to the earliest pioneers of the independent black denominations, to black missionaries in Africa, to the eloquent rhetoric of W.E.B. DuBois, the story of the black church is a tale of variety and struggle in the midst of constant racism and oppression. It is also a story of constant change, and of the coincidence of cultural cohesion among enslaved Africans and the introduction of Protestant evangelicalism to their communities.

A selection of Library of Congress primary sources exploring the Harlem Renaissance. This set also includes a Teacher's Guide with historical context and teaching suggestions.

Article in the 1925 magazine "Your car; a magazine of romance, fact and fiction" by a former criminal about his experience working for Henry Ford. The article is on pages 44, 45, and 82.

A selection of Library of Congress primary sources exploring the history and civil rights legacy of the NAACP. This set also includes a Teacher s Guide with historical context and teaching suggestions.

This site illustrates the story of settlement on the Great Plains. Family letters of one homesteader express personal insight into the joy, despair, and determination in his struggle to establish a home on the prairie.

This collection assembles a wide array of Library of Congress source materials from the 1920s that document the widespread prosperity of the Coolidge years, the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy, and the role of government in this transition. It includes nearly 200 selections from twelve collections of personal papers and two collections of institutional papers from the Manuscript Division; 74 books, pamphlets, and legislative documents from the General Collections, along with selections from 34 consumer and trade journals; 181 photographs from the pictorial materials of the National Photo Company Collection held by the Prints and Photographs Division; and 5 short films and 7 audio selections of Coolidge speeches from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. The collection is particularly strong in advertising and mass-marketing materials and will be of special interest to those seeking to understand economic and political forces at work in the 1920s.

Reclaiming the Everglades represents all or part of sixteen 'physical' collections housed in the archives and special collections of University of Miami, Florida International University and the Historical Museum of Southern Florida. This online compilation includes a rich diversity of unique or rare materials: personal correspondence, essays, typescripts, reports and memos; photographs, maps and postcards; and publications from individuals and the government.

Selected items from the Rosa Parks collection, documenting the life, work, and legacy of civil rights legend Rosa Parks. Selected items from the Rosa Parks collection, documenting the life, work, and legacy of civil rights legend Rosa Parks.