Web Resource

October 15, 2020

Every election is consequential and determining who has the right to vote has been a struggle since the founding of the nation. Over the course of U.S. history, the stakes of some elections have been higher than others, especially in times of a national political, social, economic, or health crisis. Elections can also indicate the vitality of democracy itself, testing the structures of government as well as the public’s embrace of democratic principles. For those wanting to better understand this history, the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning has gathered a number of documents and teaching resources related to elections in the United States.

Some of the collected materials describe the efforts of men and women to expand voting rights in order to realize the nation’s ideals of freedom and democracy, for example, the campaign to win women’s suffrage. The movement to secure voting rights for African American and Mexican American residents showed the bravery, tenacity and patriotism of activists. All of these voting rights campaigns also reveal persistent efforts to constrict the electorate in order to maintain white supremacy and keep political power in the hands of those with race and economic privilege.

Other materials focus specifically on past elections, highlighting moments when the media and political campaigns developed new ways to persuade voters or to forecast election outcomes.

Finally, given the contentious 2020 Supreme Court confirmation process, a section addresses the issue of Supreme Court nominations and how the composition of the Court became politicized by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an attempt to advance the New Deal. At the bottom of the page, we share links to other digital archives and resources that examine these, and many other issues, in more depth.

Click here to explore Understanding Elections in U.S. History.

As higher education is increasingly a subject of contentious debate, one way to explore the history of our own public university system is to visit the onine CUNY Digital History Archive. This online participatory archive and portal is a work-in-progress and we welcome your contributions. Focused on stories and material that document the struggle to build and sustain the democratic mission of the university and its colleges, this growing resource will inform and involve teachers, students and the general public. Visitors to the website can do keyword searches, browse all items (now over 300), or search by subject, date, or collection.

This summer we completed “Free Speech at CCNY, 1931-1942,” contributed and curated by former City College of New York faculty member Carol Smith. This collection contains images, articles, fliers, and more detailing the fight that CCNY faculty and students waged during the 1930s and early 1940s in opposition to the New York State legislative Rapp-Coudert Committee’s attacks on left faculty and in support of their freedom of speech on campus.This and all collections contain an introductory essay plus an assortment of primary documents, many never before published.

Also recently posted (with more to come) are items from the “Save Hostos!” collection, contributed by former Hostos Community College professor Gerald Meyer. Articles, documents, fliers, and images reveal the fierce community/college/ union battle that ultimately saved the college in the 1970s.

Explore the Archive and get involved in building and disseminating these important materials!

ASHP recently launched new features on the Who Built America: Badges for History Education website, our online professional development program. These improvements represent our continued commitment to providing classroom ready, discipline specific professional learning to history teachers.

We’ve developed four tutorials designed to aid teachers in modeling disciplinary literacy and historical thinking skills in their classrooms. The skill tutorial topics include: thinking historically, building context, using evidence, and reading and writing for arguments. We feel strongly that such skills are essential to effective instruction, and have incorporated the tutorials into the badge earning process.

To make badges more accessible to those unfamiliar with online professional development, we’ve also introduced a new set of entry-level lesson builder badges. Lesson builder badges allow teachers to design their own U.S. or world history lessons and focus their instructional design on a specific disciplinary literacy skill. See our WBA Badges page for more information about this new structure.

Educators throughout the country are already using the redesigned site, including the New York City Department of Education, which approved our new badge courses for their After School Professional Development Program last fall.

ASHP is pleased to announce a major overhaul of HERB: Social History for Every Classroom, our free web resource of primary sources, curated collections, and teaching activities on U.S. history. HERB is now entering its fifth year online, and has been used by thousands of educators around the country.

We’ve improved the visual layout of the site, optimized it for use on tablets and other mobile devices, and redesigned the search functionality with more accurate and filterable search results. And teaching activities are now sorted by pedagogical strategy and include a description of how best to implement each in the classroom.

In addition to changes to the site’s design and functionality, we’ve also added new content to HERB, including a collection on Mexican immigration in the early twentieth century and a collection on Cuban immigration and Puerto Rican migration to the United States.

We hope these changes will improve the overall user experience and make this rich resource accessible to even more history teachers in the future.

ASHP has received funding from the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation to further develop the CUNY Digital History Archive, a participatory project to create, collect, and conserve the histories of the City University of New York. This open archive and portal gives the CUNY community and the broader public online access to a range of materials related to the history of the City University of New York. The CDHA will make available materials contributed by individuals whose lives, in diverse ways, have shaped and been shaped by CUNY. Faculty, staff, and students have fought to sustain the university’s democratic mission and one of the goals of the CUNY Digital History Archive is to document and preserve the stories of those efforts. This project also involves collaboration with CUNY college libraries and archives that house significant collections and records related to the history of the university. With the support of this grant, we look forward to increased partnering with these libraries and archives as well as to conducting oral history interviews and incorporating contributions from former and current members of the CUNY community. Please contact us if you would like to contribute materials to this project.

In summer 2015, ASHP redesigned and updated The Lost Museum as well as our primary site. Both designs embrace modern web standards and improve browsing on mobile devices, along with general usabilty and accessibility.

Visitors to The Lost Museum are given the opportunity explore a 3D recreation of P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in mid-nineteenth century New York. The redesigned site, launched to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the fire that destroyed the museum, includes larger, higher-resolution graphics and easier navigation of the museum. Visitors also have the option to seek out clues to discover who, among suspects representing social and political figures of the period, may have set the fatal 1865 fire. The site’s annotated digital archive of materials from the American Museum is improved as well and is now mobile-friendly and more easily searched. The virtual museum first launched in 2000 and was produced by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

ASHP’s primary site was relaunched with the goal of providing easier navigation, especially for mobile users, and improving communication with our varied constituencies. Improvements include a cleaner home page, integration of news and featured content across the site, easier than ever shopping for ASHP’s documentaries, and a news section for updates between issues of our newsletter.

On July 13, 1865, in a spectacular fire witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers, P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in downtown Manhattan mysteriously burned to the ground. The five-story building on Broadway and Ann Street—called “the most visited place in America”—had housed a continuing array of artifacts, oddities, productions, and creatures since its opening in 1841. This July, to mark the 150th anniversary of the destruction of Barnum’s American Museum, the award-winning Lost Museum website (http://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/), first launched by American Social History Project in 2000, will re-launch in a new, enhanced format with larger graphics, clearer navigation, and with full access for the many tablets and devices that now connect to the Internet.

Barnum’s American Museum was one of the most significant cultural institutions in New York City history yet is now largely forgotten. Occurring three months after the close of the Civil War, the museum’s fiery demise, with the terrible spectacle of burning animals and onlookers cavorting among smoldering attractions, provided an unforgettable end to an institution created by the legendary showman that had entertained, educated, and often scandalized a generation of Americans. And even after its disappearance, Barnum’s American Museum would remain the model for mass entertainment extravaganzas.

It was not until 2000 that Barnum’s American Museum once again opened its doors to the public—but this time in virtual form. Years in the making, The Lost Museum, a website produced by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, took visitors back to the nineteenth century on a 3-D tour of the American Museum and its myriad attractions. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, informed by the latest scholarship, and utilizing cutting-edge technology, The Lost Museum was widely hailed in the press and broadcast media; received numerous new technology and education awards and citations; and garnered tens of thousands of virtual visitors internationally.

Now, thanks to this updated and redesigned version of The Lost Museum, the mysterious FeeJee Mermaid, the beautiful Circassian Woman, Confederate president Jefferson Davis in his wife’s dress—these and many other revelations and deceptions are again on view, supplemented by a rich archive of historical documents and artifacts. And visitors also have the option to seek out clues to discover who, among suspects representing social and political figures of the period, may have set the fatal 1865 fire.

Contact: Andrea Vásquez (avasquez1@gc.cuny.edu)

February 11, 2015 marked the launch of the fourth Mission US digital role-playing game. This series of free online games is created to engage middle and high school students in the exploration and understanding of U.S. history. “City of Immigrants” supports the study of immigration, the labor movement, and cultural identity in the American History curriculum. Players take on the role of Lena Brodsky, a Russian Jewish teen who has immigrated to New York City in 1907. As Lena makes the Lower East Side her home, she struggles to help support her family and finds herself in the middle of the growing labor movement.

As young people play “City of Immigrants,” they gain important insights into the struggle for safe working conditions, fair wages, and the right to bargain collectively. At the same time, they experience the challenges of cultural differences, assimilation, and prejudice. Players will interact with a variety of characters, from factory supervisors to family and religious leaders, who all had roles in creating America’s labor movement and strong communities in New York. As they assume the role of Lena, players must decide: Does she dare speak up and stand up for workers’ rights? Can she continue to support her family? Players will make choices and experience the consequences of those choices – the same choices immigrants grappled with as they made their way in the United States.

ASHP-CML has been partnering with the Education Development Center to develop Zoom In, an online platform to support literacy-rich instruction in history classrooms. For its first large-scale field study this school year, Zoom In is recruiting and building cohorts of teachers throughout the country and is interested in enrolling history teachers who would like to incorporate new technologies into their classrooms.

For more information on Zoom In, and if you are interested in piloting the program, visit zoomin.cct.edc.org or contact Noah Goodman at ngoodman@edc.org.