National History Day
DPLA is proud to be a part of National History Day, a series of contests 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.
2020-21 Theme: Communication in History: The Key To Understanding
The 2020-21 National History Day theme is “Communication in History: The Key to Understanding.” 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 and Exhibitions available via DPLA that would be useful for exploring this year’s theme.
Black Women’s Suffrage and Communication
This year, we launched a new Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection, which provides free access to nearly 200,000 letters, memoirs, diaries, newspaper clippings, images, and more that bring to life the history of Black Women’s activism from the 1850s to the 1960s and beyond. The materials featured in the Ida B. Wells Barnett Papers, from our partner the University of Chicago Libraries, help tell the story of how Ida B. Wells Barnett used the written word as a powerful tool to help wage her campaign against lynching and for civil rights and women’s rights.
Explore the Ida B. Wells Barnett Papers.
Visit the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection.
Art & Literature as Communication
- Primary Source Set: Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and Modern War
- Primary Source Set: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
- Primary Source Set: Second Ku Klux Klan and The Birth of a Nation
- Primary Source Set: Truth, Justice, and the Birth of the Superhero Comic Book
- Primary Source Set: Pop Art in the US
- Primary Source Set: The Awakening by Kate Chopin
- Primary Source Set: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
- Primary Source Set: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Primary Source Set: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
- Primary Source Set: The Watsons Go to Birmingham–1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
- Primary Source Set: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
- Primary Source Set: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
- Primary Source Set: Jitterbugs, Swing Kids and Lindy Hoppers
- Primary Source Set: Rock ‘n’ Roll: Beginnings to Woodstock
- Primary Source Set: The Hudson River School
- Primary Source Set: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Communication and Protest
- Primary Source Set: Ida B. Wells and Anti-lynching Activism
- Primary Source Set: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Civil Rights Movement in Rural Mississippi
- Primary Source Set: Busing and Beyond: School Desegregation in Boston
- Primary Source Set: The Black Power Movement
- Primary Source Set: Negro League Baseball
- Primary Source Set: Stonewall and its Impact on the Gay Liberation Movement
- Primary Source Set: ACT UP and the AIDS Crisis
- Online Exhibition: Activism in the US
- Primary Source Set: Women and the Antebellum Reform Movement
- Primary Source Set: Women’s Suffrage: Campaign for the 19th Amendment
- Primary Source Set: The Equal Rights Amendment
Communication and Technology
- Primary Source Set: The Steam Engine and Transportation in the 19th Century
- Online Exhibition: Building the Transcontinental Railroad
- Online Exhibition: 200 Years on the Erie Canal
- Primary Source Set: Electrifying America
- Primary Source Set: The Invention of the Telephone
- Primary Source Set: The Panama Canal
- Primary Source Set: The Golden Age of Radio in the US
- Primary Source Set: The Impact of Television on News Media