Browse Items (230 total)
Lesson Plan - Indigenous and English Relations in 17th Century Virginia
The period of first contact between Indigenous people and English colonists in 1607 until the end of Bacon’s Rebellion can be described as a time featuring periods of intermittent uneasy coexistence and warfare. When Captain John Smith explored the…
Lesson Plan - Cold War Politics and Culture in the 20th Century United States
After the Soviet Union launched a test nuclear missile in 1949, the "Cold War" between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. intensified. As each superpower stockpiled more nuclear weapons, the United States fashioned scenarios about what might happen if the…
Lesson Plan – Virginia's Coal Industry, 19th and 20th Centuries
Historically, coal has been one of Virginia’s most valuable natural resources. The first coal mines were developed after deposits were discovered early in the 1700s in Chesterfield County. Although Chesterfield exported the most coal before the Civil…
Lesson Plan - Mapping Revolutionary War Turning Points in Virginia
In the eighteenth century, Virginia's location on the mid-Atlantic seaboard was a key point along colonial trade routes, communication corridors, and military supply lines. Virginia also boasted natural harbors and successful ports in the areas of…
Jack Jouett's Ride, 1781
During the American Revolution, many ordinary people took extraordinary actions in defiance of the British government. From Paul Revere’s ride to warn Massachusetts residents about British troops on the move to Kate Barry’s trek through the South…
Public Assemblages Act for the Separation of Races, 1926
After the U.S. Supreme Court determined in 1896 that “separate but equal” was not unconstitutional in Plessy v. Ferguson, southern state legislatures passed a flurry of segregation laws. In truth, Virginia had already begun codifying segregation in…
Equal Rights Amendment, Ratification Demonstrations, 1970s
The battle to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was a key component of the women’s rights movement in the 1970s. The amendment, first proposed in 1923, said “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States…
Henry Box Brown and his Anti-Slavery Panorama, 1851
Henry Box Brown gained fame after escaping slavery in Richmond in 1849. Although many others self-emancipated to freedom, Brown is the only person documented to have shipped himself to freedom. He used his fame to speak out against slavery as a…
Benjamin Franklin, Stamp Act Testimony, 1766
Although he is one of the best-known leaders of the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin spent years attemping to encourage Americans and the British government to better understand the other before war broke out. Born in 1706, Benjamin Franklin…
Hiram Bartee, Indictment for Abolitionism, Scott County, 1859
In October 1859, white abolitionist John Brown led an armed raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to overthrow the system of slavery. Sixteen people died in the raid. Brown and six of his…