For Educators: Explaining Today
In the spring of 2022, the American Historical Association, the National Council for the Social Studies, the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, and New American History hosted a series of listening sessions for K-12 educators and higher education faculty, an opportunity to listen to the concerns of educators concerned about the teaching of US history amidst political controversy. Teachers expressed a need to find inquiry-based learning resources and tools to foster reflective thinking using credible sources, without violating new state laws or local policies. In the spirit of supporting these colleagues, we offer the following resources.
To access all the resources, please visit the New American History website.
Topics (as requested by educators in previous listening sessions.)
Early America
- Freedom's Fortress
- 1619 v. 1776
- The Deleted Passage of the Declaration of Independence
- The Revolutions
Emancipation and Reconstruction
- Freedom's Fortress
- T. Thomas Fortune: The Black Radical You've Never Heard Of
- Harriet Tubman
- Seizing Freedom: A Tulsa Postcard
- Seizing Freedom: Truth Makes the Man Free
- A Brief Moment in the Sun
- Southern Journey: The Restless South, 1860-1940
Redlining
- Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America
- Renewing Inequality: From Redlining to Family Displacements through Urban Renewal, 1950-1966
- Not Even Past: Redlining and Public Health
- The Lines That Shape Our Cities: Redlining and Environmental Inequalities
- Southern Journey: Arrival and Return, 1940-2020
The History of Racist Violence in the United States
In response to ongoing racist violence in the United States, we have compiled a list of AHA resources on the history of racist violence. Teachers can use them in classrooms to help students understand the history of the present; journalists can draw on them to provide historical context for current events; researchers can draw on them to inform future scholarship.