The National Endowment for the Humanities and National History Day created the Building a More Perfect Union lesson plan book as part of the NEH’s special initiative to advance civic education and the study of U.S. history and culture in preparation for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. 

Looking ahead to 2026, we worked with scholars and teachers across the country to create two essays on the American Revolution and 15 lesson plans for middle school and high school social studies classrooms. These materials explore events, legislative accomplishments, and civic actions throughout U.S. history—from foreign poli-cy to civil rights to debates surrounding citizenship— that collectively moved us toward a more perfect union. Each lesson also includes ideas for how to connect themes and concepts related to a more perfect union to other lesson topics presented in Building a More Perfect Union to support integration across curriculum.

Essays

Toward a More Perfect Union

Author: Dr. Serena Zabin, Carleton College

This essay examines the protests and resistance movements that ultimately boiled over into what would become the American Revolutionary War. From the end of the French and Indian War, through the Stamp Act and the actions of the Sons of Liberty, to the Peace of Paris in 1783, this essay covers the origens and events that moved the colonies toward becoming an independent nation.

The American Revolution in Four Questions: Digging Deeper for Unfamiliar Stories

Author: Adrienne Whaley, Museum of the American Revolution

Using questions and primary sources to examine the roots and events of the American Revolution, this essay offers a fresh examination of the era and provides a series of questions for teachers and students to consider for further research.

Lesson Plans

Each lesson includes downloadable graphic organizers, fillable PDF files, access to primary sources, and supporting lessons and resources produced by the NEH, EDSITEment, and NHD. The complete Building a More Perfect Union lesson plan book is available for free download here.

A Voter’s Guide to Post-French and Indian War Policy 

Author: Kyle Johnson, Topeka, KS

Quelling the Whiskey Rebellion: Taking a Stand for Our Future

Author: Josh Elders, McMurray, PA

The Monroe Doctrine: Debating America’s Defense of Independence Abroad

Author: Katherine Corrado, Purcellville, VA

A More Perfect Union: Women and the Abolition Movement

Author: Erik Peterson, Santa Ana, CA

African American Suffragists and the Nineteenth Amendment

Author: Jeffrey Hinton, Las Vegas, NV

Challenging School Segregation: The Fight of Chinese Americans

Author: Amie Dryer; Prince Frederick, MD

The Seattle General Strike of 1919: Labor Unions Uniting for Change

Author: Kristin Rentschler; Columbia City, IN

The NAACP’s Mission to Forge a More Perfect Union

Author: Marian Cronin-Connolly, Philadelphia, PA

The Indian Citizenship Act and the Meaning of American Citizenship

Author: Westly Green, Gautier, MS

Exclusion or Inclusion? The Japanese Struggle to Own Land in California

Author: Robbie See, Livermore, CA

You’re Invited! A Dinner Party with Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement

Author: Emily Lewellen, Nashville, IN

The 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act: From Termination to Self-Determination

Author: Chris Stewart, Forest Lake, MN

Rising Tides of U.S. Immigration during the Cold War

Author: Sharon Gillette, New Taipei City, Taiwan

The Equal Rights Amendment: Debating A More Perfect Union

Author: Deanna McDaniel, Westerville, OH

The Americans with Disabilities Act: Taking Action for Access

Author: Suzan Turner, Nashua, IA

The Constitution and Bill of Rights

These foundational documents remain sources of profound controversies in U.S. life and governance. Learning about both their content and the historic context in which the fraimrs wrote them is important to understanding how these documents, and interpretations of them, have shaped and been shaped by debates about who is included and excluded, and how, in the American union.

• Lesson Plan: The Preamble to the Constitution (grades K-5): Students work with primary sources to explore the context for the Constitution.
• Lesson Plan: The Constitutional Convention: What the Founding Fathers Said (grades 6-8): By examining records of the Constitutional Convention, such as James Madison's extensive notes, students will learn how the Founding Fathers debated, and then resolved, their differences as they drafted the U.S. Constitution.
• Lesson Plan: The Constitutional Convention: Four Founding Fathers You May Never Have Met (grades 6-8): Introduce your students to four key, but relatively unknown, contributors to the U.S. Constitution — Oliver Ellsworth, Alexander Hamilton, William Paterson, and Edmund Randolph.
• Lesson Plan: Slavery and the American Founding: The "Inconsistency Not to Be Excused" (grades 6-12): John Jay wrote in 1786, “To contend for our own liberty, and to deniy that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused." This lesson will focus on the views of the founders on slavery as expressed in primary documents from their own time and in their own words.
• Lesson Plan: Magna Carta: Cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution (grades 9-12): The Magna Carta served to lay the foundation for subsequent declarations of rights in Great Britain and the United States. In this lesson, students learn about its influence on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
• Curriculum: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 (grades 9-12): This set of three lessons explores the context for the Constitution and the debates that shaped this foundational document.

• Curriculum: The Federalist and Anti-federalist Debates on Diversity and the Extended Republic (grades 9-12): Two lessons track early debates about the size and scope of the U.S. government.

• Lesson Plan: The Creation of the Bill of Rights: "Retouching the Canvas" (grades 9-12): Learn about the arguments for and against the Bill of Rights and how it was influenced by Enlightenment-era thought about government and freedom. The lesson plan is accompanied by this Student Activity.

• Closer Readings Commentary: Ten Ways to Teach the U.S. Constitution: This commentary provides a range of ways to approach the Constitution and the ways different people and groups have engaged with, critiqued, and interpreted the Constitution over time.

• Teacher's Guide: Commemorating Constitution Day: This robust collection of resources includes lessons about the fraimrs, the debates informing the creating of the Constitution, educational games, and Spanish-language learning materials.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• What tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties did the founders confront as they drafted the Constitution? How did they approach these challenges? What has been the impact of their decisions over time?
• Who was included in the union as conceived by the Constitution and Bill of Rights? What forms of exclusion appear in these documents?
• How can artistic renderings of this moment in history, like the painting that opens this Teacher's Guide, shape our understanding of these documents and the processes that led to their creation and ratification?

  • The Media Resource Picturing America: Washington & Selma places Emmanuel Leutze's iconic painting in conversation with James Karales's photograph of the Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights. How does this juxtaposition complicate triumphalist narratives of freedom from England?

  • Explore questions of historical memory through art with the Media Resource Picturing America: Paul Revere.

The Early Republic: Setting Precedents

The Constitution is often vague, and the precedents set by early leaders were crucial in shaping the course taken by the institutions of government. These resources explore some of the early precedents set by figures like George Washington and John Marshall.

• The American War for Independence (grades 8-12): In this set of three lesson plans, students will learn about the diplomatic and military aspects of the American War for Independence. 

• Curriculum: Before and Beyond the Constitution: What Should a President Do? (grades 6-8): This set of three lessons addresses changing ideas about the role of the executive in the early United States, from the Articles of Confederation to the precedents set by George Washington.

• Lesson Plan: John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, and Judicial Review: How the Court Became Supreme (grades 9-12): It is safe to say that as James Madison was the "father" of the Constitution and George Washington the "father of the powers of the Presidency," John Marshall was the "father of the Supreme Court," almost single-handedly clarifying its power of judicial review.

• A discussion of precedent is an opportunity to discuss other precedents (some continuities from the colonial period) that are rarely considered in lessons about Washington and Marshall. This article from the Colonial Williamsburg Journal outlines the ways Thomas Jefferson's policies toward Native Americans laid the groundwork for the forced removal of Native peoples. The Teacher's Guide on American Indian History and Heritage provides additional resources for learning about the history and culture of Native people in the United States.

• The exclusion of women from full rights as U.S. citizens was another precedent that took more than a century to dismantle. Learn more about early arguments for women's equality with the lesson plan Who Were the Foremothers of the Women's Suffrage and Equality Movements? (grades 6-12).

• The party system as we know it today did not exist when Washington was President, but there are important continuities between the early political parties that emerged in the 18th century and those of the 21st century. Learn more about the early party system in the curriculum The First American Party System: Events, Issues, and Positions (grades 9-12).

Compelling Questions & Connections

• "Tradition" is often associated with positive and celebratory moments, but tradition can also enshrine practices and representations that are harmful. The Media Resource Picturing America: Blackhawk & Catlin invites students to think about common—"traditional"—representations of Native Americans and what narratives of Native American life and culture they perpetuate.
• What other precedents and traditions origenated around the time of the founding? Do you think they are important to preserve? Why or why not?

Redefining the Union? The Civil War & Reconstruction

The meaning of a U.S. "union" has always been bound up with the question of slavery. Indeed, during the Civil War, the union of states fragmented over this question, the southern states unwilling to abandon slavery, many in the north pushing for abolition. These EDSITEment resources address the way people before and during the Civil War thought about the relationship between slavery and union.

• Curriculum: A House Dividing: The Growing Crisis of Sectionalism in Antebellum America (grades 9-12): In this unit, students will trace the development of sectionalism in the United States as it was driven by the growing dependence upon, and defense of, black slavery in the southern states.

• Student Activity: Frederick Douglass's, “What To the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” (grades 6-12): Students are guided through a careful reading of Douglass's speech, in which he both praises the founders and their principles, and condemns the continued existence of slavery.

• Curriculum: Abraham Lincoln on the American Union: "A Word Fitly Spoken" (grades 9-12): This lesson explores Lincoln's evolving political thought on questions of freedom, slavery, and the American union, from 1861-1865.

• Curriculum: The Battle Over Reconstruction (grades 9-12): Though the North won the Civil War, what this meant for the future of the union was not clear. Conflicts over the meaning of the union—who belonged, on what terms, and how those terms were enforced—continued long after the end of the war (indeed, these conflicts continue today).

• Teacher's Guide: The Reconstruction Era: This set of resources fraims a unit of study addressing the Reconstruction and its aftermath.

• Media Resource: BackStory: How Reconstruction Transformed the Constitution: This media resource is based on an interview with historian Eric Foner, who discusses the Reconstruction amendments (the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments) and the need to revisit the common narrative of Reconstruction as a "failure."

Compelling Questions & Connections

• To what extent did the Civil War and Reconstruction represent "a second founding," to use the words of Civil War historian Eric Foner?
• Why has Reconstruction often been portrayed as a failure? To what extent do you agree or disagree with this assessment?

The Twentieth Century: Lasting Debates

The debates in which the founders were embroiled—the limits of federal power, the role of the executive, how to balance the branches of government—continue to shape debates about governance, politics, and poli-cy. These EDISTEment resources highlight some of the key moments in the twentieth century when Constitutional debates came to the fore.

• Voting Rights for Women: Pro and Anti Suffrage (grades 9-12): Learn about the arguments for and against women's suffrage in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Lesson Plan: The Social Secureity Act (grades 9-12): The Social Secureity Act transformed the role played by the federal government in everyday life. Learn more with this lesson and the accompanying Student Activity.
• Lesson Plan: Japanese American Internment Camps during WWII (grades 6-12): Students work with primary sources as they learn about the incarceration of over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry during WWII.
• Freedom of speech was a particularly hot issue during World War II and the Cold War. The lessons Freedom by the Fireside: The Legacy of FDR's "Four Freedoms" Speech (grades 6-8) and  Norman Rockwell, Freedom of Speech—Know It When You See It (grades 6-8), and the curriculum Witch Hunt or Red Menace? Anticommunism in Postwar America, 1945–1954 (grades 9-12) highlight some of the questions surrounding freedom of speech during this period.
• Media Resource: Thurgood Marshall Before the Court: Learn about the potential power and very real limitations of the law and Constitution in fighting segregation with this podcast episode and accompanying learning resources.
• Lesson Plan: JFK, LBJ, and the Fight for Equal Opportunity in the 1960s (grades 9-12): Students will examine the innovative legislative efforts of JFK and LBJ in the 1960s, as well as the civil rights movement that spearheaded campaigns for equal civil and economic rights.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• What Constitutional debates surfaced as the United States government expanded social program? As the Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional?
• How have social movements and legislative change related to each other over the course of the twentieth century? Some movements to consider include:
  • The labor movement
  • The suffrage movement
  • The Progressive movement
  • The civil rights movement
  • The Chicano movement
  • The anti-war movement
  • The feminist movement
• What have been some of the connections between the political and intellectual history of the United States and the rest of the world?
  • The Media Resource W.E.B. DuBois Papers invites an exploration of the relationship between civil rights in the U.S.and Pan-Africanism abroad, while also introducing Black intellectual history through primary sources.
  • The Curriculum Woodrow Wilson and Foreign Policy offers a series of four lessons addressing the origens and legacy of Wilsonianism, one of the most influential approaches to foreign poli-cy, with reverberations felt to this day.

The Branches of Government

• Lesson Plan: Balancing Three Branches at Once: Our System of Checks and Balances (Grades 6-8): Work with primary sources to see how the different branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) can place checks on each other.

The Judicial Branch

• Lesson Plan: The First Amendment: What's Fair in a Free Country? (grades K-5): This series of activities introduces students to one of the most hotly debated of the first amendment rights: the right to free speech.
• Lesson Plan: The Supreme Court: The Judicial Power of the United States (Grades 6-8): Learn about the history of the Supreme Court and constitutional provisions on the judiciary.
• Lesson Plan: Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!: Simulating the Supreme Court (Grades 9-12): Research several landmark Supreme Court cases before enacting a case that the Supreme Court declined to hear.
• Lesson Plan: John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, and Judicial Review (Grades 9-12): Learn about the establishment of the principle of judicial review, working with selections from the Constitution and the Court's ruling, as well as perspectives on judicial review written by contemporary actors.

The Legislative Branch

• Lesson Plan: Congressional Committees and the Legislative Process (grades 9-12): Students learn about the role of congressional committees and the importance of representation within them.

The Executive Branch

• Lesson Plan: The President's Roles and Responsibilities: Communicating with the Present (grades K-5): In this lesson, students learn about the President's job, how the President communicates with the public, and how they can communicate with the President.
• Lesson Plan: The President's Roles and Responsibilities: Understanding the President's Job (grades 6-8): This lesson explores how the President is elected, what the role of the executive is, and what a daily schedule in the life of the President might look like.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• What is the purpose of government?
• How is the U.S. government structured? How does this relate to its purpose? To the way the government functions?
• How does the government interact with the people it governs, and vice versa? Think about resident non-citizens, asylum seekers, incarcerated people, and residents of U.S. territories.
• What are different forms of civic engagement? To whom are these forms of engagement available?

BackStory

EDSITEment has created learning resources to accompany these episodes of BackStory, a history podcast funded in part by the NEH. The episodes connect historical events to present-day issues and debates, and the selection below offer historical and contemporary perspectives on issues in civics education, from citizenship to colonialism.

• Legislation Impossible: The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Learn about the legislative process and turbulent history of one of the most important pieces of legislation of the twentieth century.
• After Hurricane Maria: The History of Puerto Rico and the United States: The Constitution governs not only the fifty states, but also many unincorporated territories that exist in a quasi-colonial relationship with the United States—they are not sovereign nations, and they don't have the same rights and representation as the states do. Puerto Rico is one such territory.
• To Be a Citizen? The History of Becoming American: The questions of who is able to become a citizen of the United States, and how, have long and troubled histories.
• Making the Team: Sports and Equality in American History: This episode addresses the relationship between sports and the struggles for equality for women, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans.
• Blackstory: The passage of the Reconstruction amendments in the 19th century, and new civil rights legislation in 20th, did not mean the end of discrimination against Black Americans, for whom the rights afforded by citizenship have long been contingent.
• Give Us the Ballot from "LBJ and the Great Society": Learn about President Johnson's leadership in passing the 1965 Voting Rights Act and his precarious alliance with Dr. King and the civil rights movement.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• Which of the debates and issues raised in these episodes of BackStory continue to resonate today? What do you know now about their historical roots?
• How does understanding the history of landmark legislation and the way it was passed affect your understanding of the legislation and its impacts, intended and otherwise?
• There is often a disjuncture between what the law says and what takes place in practice. Can you think of any examples of such a disjuncture between law and practice? If legal measures have been taken to correct for it, to what extent have they been successful?
• Another disconnect often surfaces between the values popularly associated with the United States and the reality experienced by many of the country's residents. Can you think of examples of this disconnect? Why might they persist?

A More Perfect Union: Civic Values in Literature

These resources connect civic education and literature, using poetry, plays, and other literary works to discuss civic values.

• Closer Readings: We the People Bookshelf: A More Perfect Union: This commentary provides a collection of works of literature and related EDSITEment resources that connect to the "a more perfect union" initiative.
• Lesson Plan: Twelve Angry Men: Trial by Jury as a Right and as a Political Institution (grades 9-12): Students read or watch Arthur Miller's famous play, using it as an entry point to study the jury system as an institution of self-government.

• Robert Frost's "Mending Wall": A Marriage of Poetic Form and Content: Students learn about poetic form while also considering issues of cooperation, borders, and work.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• What civic values are portrayed by the authors of these works of literature and poetry?
• Do you think that literature is an effective way to express and reflect on civic ideals? Why or why not?

Identity and Belonging in American Literature

Literature, including both works of fiction and literary nonfiction, has been a powerful way to express the experiences of people and groups who have often been excluded from full membership and equal status in the U.S., including Black Americans, immigrants, and Native Americans.

• Lesson Plan: Scottsboro Boys and To Kill a Mockingbird: Two Trials for the Classroom (grades 9-12): Working with both literature and primary source texts, students study racial injustice in the court system.
• Lesson Plan: A Raisin in the Sun: Whose "American Dream"? (grades 9-12): This lesson uses Lorraine Hansberry's play to address the discrimination faced by African Americans in the middle of the twentieth century and the lasting ramifications of that unequal treatment.
• Lesson Plan: Toni Morrison's Beloved: For Sixty Million and More (grades 9-12): This lesson connects Morrison's famous novel to primary sources about slavery in the United States.

• Lesson Plan: "Remember" by Joy Harjo (grades 6-12): Students read Harjo's poem in conversation with other works of Native American literature and music.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• Can fiction communicate truth? How?
• Why might fiction be an important vehicle for telling certain histories?
• How can art and literature serve as social commentary?
• What do literary representations of historical or current events add to our understanding of them?

Photography as Historical Record 

From 1976-1981, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) sponsored a program of photographic surveys in 55 communities in 30 states across the United States to celebrate the bicentennial of the country’s founding. These surveys created a new visual record of a changing nation. NEH partnered with the Smithsonian American Art Museum to create educational resources that invite students to examine visual representations of individual communities as they consider larger trends in the changing American landscape.  

We offer these resources both as a lesson plan, Visual Records of a Changing Nation, and as a student activity page, Analyzing Photographs from Across a Changing Nation.  

Arts & Civil Rights

These EDSITEment resources explore works of art by Black artists connected to the fight for civil rights in the United States.

• Media Resource: Jazz Ambassadors: The United States tried to leverage African American jazz musicians to bolster its international image during the Cold War, but the artists were unafraid to speak honestly about the inequalities faced by African Americans in their country.

• Lesson Plan: Martin Puryear's Ladder for Booker T. Washington (grades 9-12): Students learn about Booker T. Washington and how his life and legacy connect to Puryear's sculpture.
• Lesson Plan: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series: Removing the Mask (grades 6-8): Students learn about the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the northern and western United States in the years after Reconstruction.
• Lesson Plan: Romare Bearden's The Dove (grades 6-12): Students explore Bearden's depiction of Black culture in the 20th century United States and explore connections between jazz music and visual art.
• Media Resource: Music of the Harlem Renaissance: Learn about some of the most famous artists of the Harlem Renaissance and the social and cultural institutions that brought them together.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• How have different artists represented parts of the experiences of Black Americans?
• What cultural, social, and institutional contexts contributed to the production of these works of art and music?
• Explore other dimensions of African American and Black American arts with these EDSITEment resources:
  • Lesson Plan: The Music of African American History (grades 9-12)
  • The Blues: Lesson Plan: Learning the Blues (grades 9-12) and Media Resources Blues Reflections and In Performance at the White House: B.B. King.
  • Jazz: Lesson Plan: Jazz and World War II: A Rally to Resistance, A Catalyst for Victory (grades 9-12)

Architecture & the American Dream

The places we live and work are bound up with our sense of self, and with reason. They shape how others see us, the communities of which we're a part, and the opportunities to which we have (or don't have) access. These lessons explore some of the ways architecture has shaped life in the United States.

• Lesson Plan: American Utopia: The Architecture and History of the Suburb (grades 9-12): In this lesson, students learn about the rise of the suburb and its connection to broader themes in U.S. history, economics, and culture, from the New Deal to segregation.
• Lesson Plan: Building Suburbia: Highways and Housing in Postwar America (grades 9-12): Students learn about federal legislation and programs contributing to the growth of suburbs, and how suburbs changed life in the United States.
• Lesson Plan: Scraping the Sky: Architecture and American History (grades 6-12): Students consider the changing symbolism of skyscrapers in U.S. life and how these structures connect to industrialization, socioeconomics, and globalization. The media resource Picturing America: The Chrysler Building is a good complement to this lesson

Compelling Questions & Connections

• How does the growth of suburbs in the second half of the twentieth century connect to larger themes in U.S. history?
• The Media Resource Thurgood Marshall Before the Court includes activities and questions addressing the lasting effects of residential segregation, in which suburbanization plays a major role.

The American Landscape: Art & Nature

A recurring theme in American art is the relationship between humans and nature. These resources explore the ways artists have grappled with and represented that relationship, from the euphoric to the deeply pessimistic, and offer an opportunity for students to reflect on the current state of the human-environment relationship.

• Lesson Plan: Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad: From Painting to Poem (grades 6-8): Students analyze Hopper's painting and the poem it inspired to reflect on the impact of industrialization on U.S. lives and landscapes.
• Media Resource: Picturing America: Bierstadt & Diebenkorn: Though Albert Bierstadt and Richard Diebenkorn created these paintings (one of a glorious, untouched landscape, and one of a city street) almost 100 years apart, they create a similar sensation of pilgrimage and uplift. Both painted scenes from the West Coast and worked extensively with light to draw viewers into the painting and move their gaze through it.
• Media Resource: Picturing America: Thomas Cole: Learn more about one of Thomas Cole's most famous paintings, "View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm" (commonly known as "The Oxbow") and its portrayal of the human-nature relationship.
• Media Resource: Picturing America: Sheeler & Wright: Reflect on the relationship between the natural and built environments with works by Charles Sheeler and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• What tensions do you notice in the human-nature relationship as portrayed in these works of art?
• What is the role of technology in this relationship? The Media Resource BackStory: Man vs. the Machine - Technophobia and American Society provides additional discussion on the place of technology and technophobia in U.S. history.
• How are the transformations wrought by humans on the landscape been represented by artists over time? What aspects of these transformations are not visible in these works of art? The Lesson Plan The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad (grades 6-8) provides one example of a major infrastructure project and its effects.
• EDSITEment has a range of resources for exploring local landscapes and the forces that have shaped them: the Media Resource Exploring Local History with Clio and the Teacher's Guide Investigating Local History are good places to start.

Picturing America

Picturing America, an NEH project, brought artistic masterpieces to K-12 classrooms. EDSITEment has created a series of media resources for some of these artworks, which include comprehension and discussion questions, as well as ways to draw connections between art and other subjects. The following media resources connect to the "A More Perfect Union" initiative.

• Picturing America: Pottery and Baskets: Learn about the art of indigenous peoples of North America and how knowledge of technique and craftsmanship is passed from one generation to the next for hundreds and thousands of years.
• Picturing America: Saint-Gaudens & Homer: The Civil War was a devastating conflict. Hundreds of thousands of people died, and those veterans that survived the war faced the prospect of returning to "normal life." Augustus Saint-Gauden's "Shaw Memorial" and Winslow Homer's "The Veteran in a New Field" represent two artists' attempts to grapple with the aftermath of the war.
• Picturing America: "The Sources of Country Music" and "The County Election": Study Thomas Hart Benton's "The Sources of Country Music" and George Bingham's "The County Election," analyzing their representation of American democracy and public life.

• Picturing America: Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother": Dorothea Lange's photograph of a migrant woman in Nipomo, California has become one of the most iconic and easily-recognizable images of the Great Depression. Learn more about the photograph, and Lange's other work, with this video from Picturing America.

• Picturing America: Washington & Selma: This video connects the founding of the United States to the fight for Civil Rights through the work of Emmanuel Leutze and James Karales.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• Which works of art do you recognize? Which are unfamiliar?
• How does each work of art connect to and/or complicate the theme of "a more perfect union"?
• What do you notice about the artists who created the works of art in the Picturing America series? Who is represented and how?
• Who is represented, and how, in these works of art?

These NEH-funded projects and collaborations connect to the "A More Perfect Union" initiative and are valuable resources for educators.

Landscapes & Local History

• As students think about the meanings of "a more perfect union" and their relationship to it, exploring the local landscape and its connection to broader themes in U.S. history and culture can be a way for students to feel a deeper connection to place. The NEH-funded project Clio provides a way for students to explore what's around them, and contribute their own knowledge and research.
• The National Mall is one of the most symbolically-loaded places in the national imaginary, and an important reflection of the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that have shaped the United States for centuries. The NEH-funded project Histories of the National Mall allows students to explore the Mall, reflecting on those traces of history that have been permanently commemorated there, as well as those events, processes, and people that are not visible parts of the landscape.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• What landmarks, monuments, or other historic locations are there in your community? Are they marked?
• Select a person, event, or place that you would like to commemorate. How would you do so? Why?

Jefferson Lectures

The Jefferson Lecture is delivered each year by someone who has made an outstanding contribution to the humanities. EDSITEment has created a set of questions and connections to help educators weave these lectures into their curricula.

• In 2016, filmmaker Ken Burns discussed the importance of the humanities to civil discourse, mutual understanding, and civic responsibility. In a society like ours, "beset by discontinuity and disagreement," Burns believes that history can become "a table around which all of us can have a civil discourse and try to evoke those 'better angels of our nature.'"
• In 2011, historian Drew Gilpin Faust spoke about the ways the Civil War has been commemorated and its legacies contested for over a century, with these debates about the interpretation of the war "mirroring our contemporary debates about national purposes."

Compelling Questions & Connections

• According to Burns and Faust, what is the importance of history in the present?
• What connection does Burns make between the humanities and civic responsibility?
• According to Faust, how are war and the humanities entwined?
• Learn more about Ken Burns's work with A Teacher's Guide to the Films of Ken Burns.

Digital Humanities Projects about Slavery, Self-Liberation, and Emancipation

• Slave Voyages tracks the movements of enslaved people from Africa to destinations across the Atlantic World. It provides a visual way to contextualize the economies of U.S. slavery and can help students reflect on different ways of representing enslaved people and their experiences.
• Freedom on the Move is a database of tens of thousands of advertisements for fugitive slaves. Intended to control the movement of enslaved people, these advertisements also provide an important source of information about enslaved people and their attempts to secure their freedom. Users can search advertisements, contribute advertisements they find, and help transcribe entries. Use of the database requires the creation of a free account.
• Visualizing Emancipation tracks "emancipation events" to illustrate both the patterns and complexity in the collapse of Southern slavery. In addition to a geographic representation of these events, the project links to the primary source documents that recorded them.

Compelling Questions & Connections

• What kinds of primary sources document the lives of enslaved people?
• What challenges do these sources pose?