Curated OER
Slavery's Opponents and Defenders
Students explore the wide-ranging debate over American slavery and the lives of its leading opponents and defenders and the views they held about America's "peculiar institution."
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Reward: Valuable Slaves
To gain insight into the American institution of slavery and how African Americans were viewed during this time, groups examine run-away slave ads and slave auction broadsides. Teams use the provided worksheet to record their impressions...
Curated OER
How Connecticut Benefited from American Slavery
Eleventh graders explore Connecticut slavery. In this American slavery instructional activity, 11th graders analyze primary sources relating to slavery in the state as they research in collaborative groups. Students determine whether...
Other
New York Historical Society: New York Divided Slavery and the Civil War
Visit this virtual museum exhibit to learn about New York City's divided opinions about slavery before and during the Civil War. There are three themes covered: Pro-Southern City, Fighting Slavery, and Civil War. Students use a...
Other
Mo Ad: Slavery Narratives
A collection of narratives taken from autobiographies, letters and diaries of slaves. Read the text or listen to the haunting stories.
PBS
Pbs: Cet: Africans in America: Teacher's Guide
Go directly to the teacher's guide developed to supplement the PBS documentary "Africans in America," which chronicles the history of slavery in the United States. Find lessons, many of which provide links to related primary sources,...
Duke University
Duke University Libraries: Digitized Collections: African American Women
Access Civil War-era documents that give us a rare first-hand glimpse into the lives of African American women at the time: letters of two slave women from the 1830s and 1850s and a hand-written memoir of another woman born shortly after...
TED Talks
Ted: Ted Ed: How Inventions Change History (For Better and for Worse)
A brief video that describes the unintended consequence of Eli Whitney's cotton gin. [5:14] Followed by a quiz and a list of additional resources to explore.
PBS
Pbs: Africans in America: Slavery and the Origins of the Civil War
An article by Columbia University historian Eric Foner that discusses how long-standing views of the role of slavery in America began to be challenged during the civil rights era of the 1960s by a new generation of historians, whose work...
Other
Indigenous History: Indigenous Slavery in the American Southeast
It is fairly well-accepted that American slavery of the 19th century developed from three distinct traditions of slavery that were mutated into a new, racialized, institutionalized form: European indentured servitude, West African...