Student Texts

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In this spoken word piece, Elizabeth Acevedo speaks of her Afro-Latina heritage, recounting how she first rejected her roots and then learned to embrace them.

The photograph depicts disability rights activists protesting for accessible public transit.

Newton’s journal depicts the inhumane treatment of enslaved people by their captors on the Middle Passage.

Congress asserts the federal government’s right to seize all property of individuals participating in or aiding the insurrection against the U.S. government.

Mum Bett hears the cries for American freedom from British tyranny and launches her own American Revolution against slavery in Massachusetts.

This section illustrates the ways in which enslaved people resisted enslavement in overt and more subtle ways.

“The Ponca’s challenge of the U.S. government marked a turning point on the long path of Indian resistance. Increasingly, after Standing Bear v. Cook, the fight for Native rights would shift from the battlefields to the courtrooms of the growing nation.”

“The desert-dwelling Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians were uprooted from their ancestral lands. For decades, they were cheated of the property rights deeded to them by the U.S. government, and then subject to restrictive deed provisions. Not until the 1980s were they able to develop their own land in Palm Springs, and only recently have they begun to restore the springs revered by their ancestors. Tribal council member Anthony J. Andreas III battles the severe mental health problems that afflict the traumatized tribe by reviving ancestral practices. Traditional Bird Songs and pottery help today’s youth draw strength from the tribe’s sources of spiritual resilience.”

This is the text of the 1820 Missouri Compromise. It shows how lawmakers tried to balance power between slave and free states when admitting Maine and Missouri into the Union.

The Code Noir shows the ways in which the French regulated their colonies using a race and religion based legal framework.