National History Day
DPLA is proud to be a part of National History Day, a series of contests celebrating its 50th year of operation in which students present research projects related to a historical theme that they’ve developed using primary and secondary sources. Containing millions of primary and secondary sources, DPLA is the perfect complement to National History Day. The page below contains information and resources related to our efforts to increase access to DPLA resources for National History Day students. Questions? Email us at education@dp.la.
2024 Theme: Turning Points in History
The 2024 National History Day theme is “Turning Points in History.” Students should begin their research with secondary sources to gain a broader context, then progress to finding primary sources, and finally make an argument about the effects of a topic in history. Below are selected free Primary Source Sets that would be useful for exploring this year’s theme.
The Arts
Primary Source Set: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern American Architecture
Primary Source Set: Truth, Justice, and the Birth of the Superhero Comic Book
Primary Source Set: Pop Art in the US
Primary Source Set: Rock n Roll: Beginnings to Woodstock
Law, Politics, and Philosophy
Primary Source Set: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Primary Source Set: Creating the US Constitution
Primary Source Set: The Fifteenth Amendment
Primary Source Set: The New Deal
Primary Source Set: The Rise of Italian Fascism and its Influence on Europe
Primary Source Set: Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society
Primary Source Set: Voting Rights Act of 1965
Primary Source Set: The United Farm Works and the Delano Grape Strike
Major Events
Primary Source Set: The Columbian Exchange
Primary Source Set: The Lewis and Clark Expedition
Primary Source Set: Cotton Gin and the Expansion of Slavery
Exhibition: The Gold Rush in Nineteenth Century America
Primary Source Set: California Gold Rush
Primary Source Set: Commodore Perry’s Expedition to Japan
Migration and Immigration
Primary Source Set: Exploration of the Americas
Primary Source Set: Mormon Migration
Primary Source Set: Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains
Primary Source Set: Immigration and Americanization: 1880-1930
Primary Source Set: The Great Migration
Primary Source Set: Puerto Rican Migration to the US
Primary Source Set: Postwar Rise of the SuburbsPrimary Source Set: Cuban Immigration After the Revolution
Science, Technology, and Transportation
Primary Source Set: Full Steam Ahead: The Steam Engine and Transportation in the Nineteenth Century
Exhibition: Two Hundred Years on the Erie Canal
Exhibition: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad
Primary Source Set: Electrifying America
Primary Source Set: The Invention of the Telephone
Primary Source Set: The Panama Canal
Primary Source Set: Shrinking the World: Pan American Airways in the Post-War Era
Primary Source Set: The Impact of Television on News Media
Primary Source Set: Space Race
Exhibition: Race to the Moon
Social Change, Protest, and Education
Primary Source Set: Nineteenth Century Schools for the Deaf and Blind
Primary Source Set: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Primary Source Set: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement in Rural Mississippi
Primary Source Set: The United Farm Works and the Delano Grape Strike
Primary Source Set: Stonewall and Its Impact on the Gay Liberation Movement
Primary Source Set: Settlement Houses in the Progressive Era
Primary Source Set: Women’s Suffrage: Campaign for the Nineteenth Amendment
Primary Source Set: The New Woman
War, Revolution, and Conflict
Primary Source Set: Revolutionary War Turning Points: Saratoga and Valley Forge
Primary Source Set: Latin American Revolutionaries
Primary Source Set: Texas Revolution
Primary Source Set: Secession of the Southern States
Primary Source Set: Battle of Gettysburg
Primary Source Set: African American Soldiers in World War I
Primary Source Set: The Atomic Bomb and the Nuclear Age