Additional Resources on Freedom and Social Movements

Additional resources on “freedom” and social movements:

General

David Hackett Fischer, Liberty and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2005)

Connecticut Freedom Trail:

http://www.ctfreedomtrail.com/site/tour_index.html

Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame: learn more about Maria Stewart, Prudence Crandall, Katherine Houghton Hepburn, and other important figures in antislavery, women’s rights, and civil rights movements.

http://www.cwhf.org/index.htm

“Freedom: A History of US” virtual exhibit inspired by the textbook series by Joy Hakim.

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/online/index.html

“The Liberty Bell: From Obscurity to Icon”: National Park Service’s Teaching With Historic Places lesson plan

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/learnmor1.htm

African-American Odyssey: American Memory collections – Frederick Douglass papers, slave narratives, African-American pamphlet collection, and “Slaves and the Courts.”

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/aohome.html

“Treasures from the Library of Congress – Abolition and Suffrage,” includes documents from woman suffrage movement and antislavery movement.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tr22a.html#abolition

“Agents of Social Change” online exhibit at Sophia Smith Collection, includes documents and lesson plans on 20th-c women activists and organizations including Gloria Steinem, Constance Baker Motley, and Dorothy Kenyon.

http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/curriculum/index.html

Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans is an extensive temporary exhibition at Mystic Seaport that celebrates and explores the maritime work, wartime service and activism of African Americans in Connecticut and across the nation. Open through 2007. Mystic Seaport produced a useful Newspaper in Education publication about the exhibition in addition to educational programs. For more information inquire . Lisa is the director of education.

The Wethersfield Historical Society maintains two late 18th century homes, a seasonal maritime museum and permanent and changing exhibits of local history in the Keeney Center on Main Street in Old Wethersfield. In addition the library has extensive manuscript and photographic collections. The manuscript collection is catalogued and cross-referenced by topic. The book Stories of Wethersfield, Four Centuries of American life in Connecticut’s “Most Auncient Towne,” authored in 1997 by Nora Howard is a well-illustrated and useful secondary source complete with index and bibliography about Wethersfield history. Available for purchase from the Historical Society. They have a complete photographic record and catalogue of the gravestones in the nearby Ancient Burying Ground in Wethersfield. This photographic record is especially useful having documented many gravestones whose inscriptions have all but disappeared due to the aging of the stones. Visit www.wethhist.org

Visit the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA or on-line at www.nrm.org for more information on their programs, exhibitions and other resources. The Museum Reference Center includes the Norman Rockwell Archive with more than 100,000 items in its collection, available by appointment. Note: the letters used in the Four Freedoms document exercise were obtained from this archive.

Currently new educational programs are under development at the Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry, Connecticut. This is one of nine historic sites operated by the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society throughout Connecticut. Visit www.hartnet.org/als

Note: The Spring 2006 issue of Connecticut History focuses on Nathan Hale and includes an article on Connecticut Curriculum connections authored by John Tully.

At the Lebanon Historical Society Museum and Visitor Center in Lebanon, CT you’ll find local history exhibits and the publication Around the Lebanon Green that describes the rich history of this community and its numerous historic sites that considers it to be the “Heartbeat of the Revolution”.

Antislavery movement:

Old Sturbridge Village’s Learning Lab: See lesson on “Antislavery” for a good selection of primary sources illustrating aspects of the antislavery movement. http://www.osv.org/education/LessonPlans/ShowLessons.php?LessonID=36

Digital History’s teaching module on pre-Civil War reform: http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/precivilwar/index.cfm

North American Slave Narratives at the Documenting the American South project. You can search by state as well as by author and subject headings; a good place to find the memoir of James Mars and others.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/

“I Will Be Heard”: Abolitionism in America. A virtual exhibit from Cornell University, including a good selection of artifacts and background information on abolitionist origins, leaders, and strategies; slavery and black resistance; slave narratives, and the 13th amendment.

http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/abolitionism/

Antislavery Literature Project:

http://antislavery.eserver.org/

“Follow This Trail to Freedom in the 1850s” an online simulation game from Gilder Lehrman Institute:

http://www.historynow.org/09_2005/interactive.html

Primary Source map on slavery: A source relating to slavery for every state.

http://www.historynow.org/12_2004/interactive.html

“Exploring Amistad at Mystic Seaport”: includes over 500 primary documents including court documents, journal entries, and newspaper stories, as well as curriculum ideas and bibliography.

http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/

“Amistad” exhibit at the Connecticut Historical Society Museum

Visit the Connecticut Historical Society on line, www.chs.org for an extensive variety of sources and materials on Connecticut history. Among the manuscript collections here is a 1936 play, Bondage, A Drama of Prudence Crandall’s Canterbury School written about the Prudence Crandall case and authored by Eugene Bushong and Anna Peck and designed to be presented by students.

“From Canterbury to Little Rock: The Struggle for Educational Equality for African-Americans” Full lesson plan including photographs, background reading, discussion questions, etc., as part of the National Park Service’s “Teaching with Historic Places” project:

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/crandall/crandall.htm

See also the Prudence Crandall Museum: http://www.chc.state.ct.us/crandall%20museum.htm

The Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury is a small museum operated by the State of Connecticut with a large collection of very useful materials. Though its website is limited in its information, a visit to the museum will be especially fruitful. Its exhibits include considerable information on Prudence Crandall, her life and her work, her activities and the case and the larger historical ramifications, as well as an exhibit on education in 19th century Connecticut. A recent publication of the museum entitled To All On Equal Terms, The Life and Legacy of Prudence Crandall is an especially useful resource. Available for purchase from the museum, this colorful booklet includes an Illustration Identification Credits and Selected Bibliography section that is most helpful. The gift shop and book store has numerous useful resources on African American history, including The Prudence Crandall Museum, A Teacher’s Resource Guide, produced for the Connecticut Historical Commission by Randy Ross-Ganguly in 1988.

In an upstairs gallery is an informative exhibit on family history of a general nature, Pieces of the Puzzle: Family Histories and Our Shared Past. The curator and contact person for the Prudence Crandall Museum is KazimieraKozlowski,

Complicity: The Hartford Courant’s special reporting on the history of slavery in Connecticut. http://www.courant.com/news/local/northeast/hc-slavery,0,3581810.special

The book version is Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery (NY: Ballantine Books, 2005)

The Freedom Business: Connecticut Landscapes Through the Eyes of Venture Smith, an exhibition at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT.

Features poems by Connecticut’s Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson that were inspired by the life of Venture Smith (c. 1729-1805), a former slave who purchased his freedom and that of his wife and children. The poems are paired with paintings from the Museum’s collection to help visitors imagine the landscapes in which Venture traveled, toiled, and eventually triumphed. By using the very personal media of art and poetry, the exhibition offers an intimate approach to a complex period in Connecticut and American history. For more information, www.flogris.org

“A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln” (virtual museum exhibit, collaboration between the Chicago Historical Society, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute): http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/ahd/index.html

“America’s Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War” (virtual museum exhibit, produced by the Valentine Museum, Chicago Historical Society, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute): http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/index.html

Woman suffrage and women’s movement:

1873 Trial of Susan B. Anthony by the “Teaching Judicial History” project:

http://www.fjc.gov/history/anthony.nsf/autoframe?openForm&header=/history/anthony.nsf/page/header&nav=''&content=/history/anthony.nsf/page/home

[This is the most authoritative version; see also the Famous Trials website for complete trial record, letters and petitions from Anthony, a ratification map of the 19th amendment, and suffrage cartoons.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/anthony/sbahome.html]

[Also note classroom simulation of the trial, available at the CCSU library]

Political Culture and Imagery of American Woman Suffrage, from the National Women’s History musem:

http://www.nwhm.org/exhibits/intro.html

The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Papers Project: site includes selected documents, research resources, links, and information about the documentary editing project.

http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/documents.html

“Votes for Women” Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920, American Memory Collection, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfwhtml/vfwhome.html and “Votes for Women” Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/naw/nawshome.html

Women of Protest: Photographs from the Records of the National Woman’s Party

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/suffrage/nwp/index.html

See also teaching ideas for these collections at http://memory.loc.gov/learn/collections/suff/history.html and

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/collections/naw/history.html

Chicago Women’s Liberation Union Herstory: documents, images and other sources from this organization, founded in 1969.

http://www.cwluherstory.org/index.html

“Exceptional Women” is just one of the many educational programs available at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. Established in 1866, Cedar Hill Cemetery is a non-sectarian, privately-managed, non-profit organization especially interested in renewing ties to the surrounding community through the exchange of ideas and information. Visit www.cedarhillcemetery.org

Selected Highlights of Women’s History, United States and Connecticut 1773 to the Present produced by the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women of the Connecticut General Assembly, www.cga.ct.gov/pcsw

Civil rights movement (1950s-1960s):

“Freedom Now!” Online database of Mississippi Freedom Movement documents at the Brown University/Tougaloo College project:

http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/FreedomNow/freemvnt.html

Songs of the Civil Rights Movement: Six key songs, with lyrics and audio file:

http://www.historynow.org/06_2006/interactive.html

Civil Rights Special Collection: WGBH-Boston’s collection of primary materials and lesson plans for teaching the civil rights movement. Good selection of materials on movement tactics and other issues. (Site is free, but you need to register.)

http://www.teachersdomain.org/special/civil/

381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story: Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibit. Click on “More Images” for photographs from the boycott.

http://www.sites.si.edu/exhibitions/exhibits/381/main.htm

Teaching the Montgomery Bus Boycott: 50 Years Later

http://www.civilrightsteaching.org/busboycott/busboycott.htm

National Archives Teaching With Documents Lesson Plan: The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/#documents

Martin Luther King Papers site includes lesson plans and other resources:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/

Civil Rights Movement Myth Busters Quiz and other resources at http://www.civilrightsteaching.org

Rounding the Bases: Library of Congress Learning Page lesson plan, using primary sources focused on baseball to teach about experiences of race and ethnicity in the 1950s and early 1960s.

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/00/base/index.html

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