Today in History

In this first installment to the American Memory: North Carolina educator's guide discover the in and outs of making calendar connections to primary source materials using the Today in History feature.

By Melissa Thibault

(Historic American Sheet Music, “Back to the Carolina You Love”, Music A-80, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library . More about the photograph)

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American Memory: North Carolina educator's guide

Each article in this series features an in-depth look at one aspect of the Library of Congress' American Memory with a special focus on North Carolina materials.

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Related pages

• The Learning Page: Community Center: This installment of the American Memory Guide explores the Learning Page's Community Center, highlighting features of particular interest to teachers.
• Civil War Journals: Integrates creative writing with social studies and enhances knowledge of the effects of the Civil War on people.
• The African American experience in NC after Reconstruction: The documents included in this lesson come from The North Carolina Experience collection of Documenting the American South and specifically focus on African Americans and race relations in the early 20th century. The lesson juxtaposes accounts that relate to both the positive improvements of black society and arguments against advancement. Combined, these primary sources and the accompanying lesson plan could be used as a Document Based Question (DBQ) in an AP US history or African American history course.

Related topics

• Learn more about American Memory, American history, Library of Congress, and North Carolina.

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The Today in History approach to primary source materials gives teachers another avenue for connecting students to historical content. By routinely browsing the ever-changing daily feature, teachers and students will encounter a wide range of resource types and cover a broad, if relatively random, range of historical events. Teachers starting the class period with a visit to Today in History will find a specific event featured. The event is described in a few paragraphs rich with historic facts and enhanced with links directly to relevant digital content from a variety of collections. Related content is not limited to images or text; there are also audio and video materials pulled from the extensive digital collections of the Library of Congress. Resources for further exploration of the event, individuals, or time period are provided via annotated links.

From the homepage of American Memory, simply select the link for Today in History to learn about a featured event that occurred on this date. In addition, an archive of events is maintained so you may search the collection of events or browse by day or month. Many dates have multiple event entries, each one marked with the year and providing related collection links.

A search for North Carolina brings up a wide range of featured events — some occurring in North Carolina and others connected to the state only tangentially. For example, it is not surprising to find December 17 featuring the famous first flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, because this event is celebrated widely as a significant innovation that represents a turning point in history. Likewise, the December 29 entry focuses on the birthday of Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, who was born in Raleigh in 1808. Less obvious are North Carolina’s connections to the birthday of Frederick Law Omstead on April 26. Omstead was the landscape architect who designed New York’s Central Park, the grounds of the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition, and, as it turns out, a significant site here in North Carolina — the extensive grounds of the Biltmore estate, George Washington Vanderbilt’s home near Asheville. Sometimes only the documents or images included in the article, not the featured event, are from North Carolina, like the photo of a woman in Statesville picking cotton illustrating the anniversary on December 11 of the 1919 monument to the boll weevil erected in Alabama.