Video: Inside The Vault Inside the Vault: Lucy Knox 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ During the siege of Boston in 1775, 19-year-old Lucy Knox gave up everything she knew and left Boston with her husband’s sword hidden in her clothes. She would never see her parents or siblings again. Lucy’s letters to her husband,...
Video: Read Along "Soldier for Equality: Jose de la Luz Saenz and the Great War" José de la Luz Sáenz (Luz) believed in fighting for what was right. Though born in the United States, Luz often faced prejudice because of his Mexican heritage. Determined to help his community, even in the face of discrimination, he...
Video: Read Along "The Escape of Robert Smalls: A Daring Voyage Out of Slavery" The mist in Charleston Inner Harbor was heavy, but not heavy enough to disguise the stolen Confederate steamship, the Planter, from Confederate soldiers. In the early hours of May 13, 1862, in the midst of the deadly U.S. Civil War,...
Video: Read Along "Barbed Wire Baseball: How One Man Brought Hope to the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII" World History As a boy, Kenichi “Zeni” Zenimura dreams of playing professional baseball, but everyone tells him he is too small. Yet he grows up to be a successful player, playing with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig! When the Japanese attack Pearl...
Video: Read Along "Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist" Art Before he became an artist named Tyrus Wong, he was a boy named Wong Geng Yeo. He traveled across a vast ocean from China to America with only a suitcase and a few papers. Not papers for drawing–which he loved to do–but immigration...
Video: Read Along "A Fist for Joe Louis and Me" World History Gordy and his family live in Detroit, Michigan, the heart of the United States automobile industry. Every night after coming home from work at one of the plants, Gordy’s father teaches him how to box. Their hero is the famous...
Video: Read Along "Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation" Almost ten years before Brown v. Board of Education , Sylvia Mendez and her parents helped end school segregation in California. An American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage who spoke and wrote perfect English, Mendez was...
Video: Read Along "Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre" Government and Civics Celebrated author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Floyd Cooper provide a powerful look at the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in our nation’s history. The book traces the history of...
Video: Read Along "Bread for Words: A Frederick Douglass Story" Government and Civics Frederick Douglass knew where he was born but not when. He knew his grandmother but not his father. And as a young child, there were other questions, such as Why am I a slave? Answers to those questions might have eluded him but...
Video: Read Along "A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story" A Ride to Remember tells how a community came together—both Black and White—to make a change. When Sharon Langley was born in the early 1960s, many amusement parks were segregated, and African American families were not allowed entry...
Video: Read Along "Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks" Literature Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) is known for her poems about “real life.” She wrote about love, loneliness, family, and poverty—showing readers how just about anything could become a beautiful poem. Exquisite follows Gwendolyn from...
Video: Read Along "The Voice That Won the Vote: How One Woman's Words Made History" In August of 1920, women’s suffrage in America came down to the vote in Tennessee. If the Tennessee legislature approved the Nineteenth Amendment it would be ratified, giving American women the right to vote. The historic moment came...
Video: Read Along "Martin & Anne: The Kindred Spirits of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank" Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. were born the same year a world apart. Both faced ugly prejudices and violence, which both answered with words of love and faith in humanity. This is the story of their parallel journeys to find...
Video: Inside The Vault Inside the Vault: Chinese Exclusion Act Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ In 1882, the US government passed legislation that prohibited Chinese immigration for ten years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization. It was the first act in American history to place broad restrictions on...
Video: Read Along "Eliza: The Story of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton" This is a beautiful and informative biography featuring extensive back matter–including information about America’s revolution, the historical relevance of letter writing, and a timeline–and exquisite, thoroughly researched art that...
Interactive Timeline: Fulfilling America's Founding Principles: African American History Government and Civics
Video: Read Along "i see the rhythm" Beginning with the roots of Black music in Africa and continuing on to contemporary hip hop, i see the rhythm takes us on a musical journey through time. We are invited to feel the rhythm of work songs on a southern plantation, to...
Video: Read Along "Before She Was Harriet" This lush, lyrical biography in verse begins with a glimpse of Harriet Tubman as an old woman, and travels back in time through the many roles she played through her life: spy, liberator, suffragist, and more. Illustrated by James...
Video: Inside The Vault Inside the Vault: Robert F. Kennedy's Report on Civil Rights Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ At the end of 1962, President John F. Kennedy asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to compile a report on the civil rights enforcement activities of the Justice Department over the previous year. In this report,...
Video: Read Along "The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos" Government and Civics This is the story of librarian Pura Belpré, told through the eyes of two young children who are introduced to the library and its treasures just before Christmas. Lulu Delacre's lovely illustrations evoke New York City at the time of...
Spotlight on: Primary Source A family torn apart by war, 1777 The Revolutionary War divided families. In 1774, eighteen-year-old Lucy Flucker married twenty-four-year-old Henry Knox. Lucy’s parents were powerful, wealthy Tories, and they were not happy with the match. Henry Knox was the son of...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Map of the Foreign-Born Population of the United States, 1900 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 According to the 1900 census, the population of the United States was then 76.3 million. Nearly 14 percent of the population—approximately 10.4 million people—was born outside of the United States. Drawn by America’s labor...