“Minnesota doesn’t typically come to mind when you think about slavery and the Civil War. It’s also not a place that’s figured into the national imagination when it comes to Black activism, either—at least, not until recently. However, as part of the series on “Black Life in Two Pandemic

“January 3, 2018, would have been Lucretia Coffin Mott’s 225th birthday. When it came to birthdays, Mott had a particular way of celebrating: she made candies without sugar for her guests. Mott is well known as an educator, an abolitionist, and a pioneer of women’s rights. But what did she hav

This cane belonged to Toussaint L’Ouverture, a military and political leader in the Haitian Revolution. The revolution began as a slave revolt in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791 and ended with emancipation and the founding of the free nation of Haiti in 1804. Nearly half a million ensl

This historical investigation is aligned with the C3 Framework and from C3teachers.org. This seventh grade annotated inquiry provides students with an opportunity to explore how words affect public op

This historical investigation is aligned with the C3 Framework and is from C3teachers.org. This inquiry provides students with an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between the dramatic increase

This historical investigation is aligned with the C3 Framework and is from C3teachers.org. The goal of this inquiry is to introduce students to historiography as they wrestle with historical significa

Bestselling 39 Clues author David Baldacci takes students on a webcast field trip to meet renowned museum curators, go behind the scenes, and investigate some of the most fascinating mysteries of American history. Baldacci is the author of Day of Doom, the last bo

In this webcast, a historian of 19th century slavery and slave literature, the Ambassador of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons at the US Department of State, the great-great-great grandson of Frederick Douglass, and a high school student activist joined together with high sc

This online exhibition features approximately 100 objects from the Museum's collections to tell stories from the earliest days of America's colonial history through the 2008 presidential election. Each object is used as the starting point for a larger story about American history. The exhibition

In 1794, Eli Whitney patented a new kind of cotton gin. His invention, using rotating brushes and teeth to remove the seeds from cotton, was quickly pirated by others. Southern plantation owners depended on slaves for labor-intensive crops such as rice, sugar, tobacco, and especially cotto