Civics Libraries
American Revolution Institute
Perhaps the most extensive collection of Revolutionary War primary source materials, ranging from soldier letters to loved ones, to American and British orderly books, to official communications regarding strategy and reconnaissance to maps, medals, ceramics and artwork.
Bill of Rights Institute
The Bill of Rights Institute divides its “Resources” collection into three categories — “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”; “Documents of Freedom”; and “Heroes & Villains.”
“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Pursuit of Happiness” is the BRI’s 16 chapter, 93 lesson digital textbook “designed to meet the course needs of a yearlong U.S. History or AP U.S. history class.”
The “Documents of Freedom” are 324 primary documents from the 1740’s to 2010’s. These include Colonial-era proclamations, founding national documents, Congressional legislation on the largest historical issues, letters and addresses from prominent Americans, pivotal Supreme Court decisions, and Constitutional amendments.
“Heroes and Villains” is BRI’s 26 lesson compare-and-contrast narrative series on prominent historical Americans and their primary civic trait — or anti-trait.
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network (C-SPAN)
A cable television and online broadcast network that records sessions of the U.S. Congress, addresses and conferences from political leaders, political candidate debates, historical programming and interviews of notable individuals.
C-Span has selected clips from these recorded exchanges to link to specific texts in the Constitution in a series called “Constitution Clips.” C-Span also uses its wealth of video footage as resources for describing political parties, interest groups, the media, campaigns, elections, presidents, and more. C-Span also has video series on world history, U.S. history and government, economics, geography and a student-centered podcast.
Center for the Study of the American Constitution (University of Wisconsin and Madison)
This center hosts an online library with hundreds of primary documents related to inspirations of the Constitution, the Founding Fathers’ arguments for and debates over the Constitution, the Constitutional Convention, the ratification of the Constitution, and European reactions to the Constitution.
The center’s chief work is The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, an as-of-now 37 volume work published from 1976 to present day. It contains over 70,000 primary documents annotated by center historians to provide maximum context and cohesion.
Civic Education Center
Provides civic education guides, original literature, lesson plans and instructional strategies for grade-school teachers of civics. The organization’s main purpose is to instill “a deep commitment to the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship” in K-12 students in Fresno public schools.
Citizenship and American Identity Program
This developing Aspen Institute program hosts public forums, facilitates workshops and publishes a host of materials exploring “the question of what it means to be American, and how to promote a shared sense of national identity.” The materials and events are meant to provide instruction on the values, systems and skills necessary for good citizenship.
ConSource
The ConSource Library holds a collection including state charters, state constitutions, Constitutional precedents, Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, papers written in support and in opposition of the Federalist series, Constitutional Convention records, U.S. Constitution, state ratifications and debates in relation, the Bill of Rights debates and passage, papers of George Washington, John Adams, James Madison and George Mason, and political sermons.
Constitution Annotated: Analysis and Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution
This webpage annotates the U.S. Constitution and contextualizes each section with a grammatical analysis, the written intentions of the founders, a historical overview and major Supreme Court decisions pertaining to the section’s subject.
It also hosts a table of Supreme Court cases, a table of earlier decisions the high court has since overturned, a table of laws struck down by the high court as unconstitutional and a table of Supreme Court justices. Additionally, the site links to Library of Congress records of Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention records, The Federalist Papers, legal research guides and the Congressional Research Service’s records on major legislation, Supreme Court cases and policy proposals.
EDSITEment
This organization provides a host of videos, podcasts, interactive programs, short films, primary texts and educational analysis of civic and societal material through American history. The purpose is not just to inform readers, but to engage their thoughts and ideas with these resources. These can be used either in a classroom or for self-study.
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
FIRE catalogs challenges to free speech by American culture or government. It’s eight databases track censored books (Banned Books), censored artwork (Censored Artwork), scholars sanctioned or otherwise punished for their speech (Scholars Under Fire Database), syllabi from college and university professors who teach about free speech (FIRE’s Syllabus Database), statements of university leaderships on free speech (Leader Statement Database), Supreme Court cases dealing with free speech (Supreme Court Justices Database), individuals who faced attempts at cancellation of a campus speaking event or successful cancellation of such an event (Campus Disinvitation Database), and an analysis of the current laws, protections and regulations surrounding free speech (First Amendment Glossary).
Jack Miller Center
The Jack Miller Center is a leading institute in the realm of citizenship and civic education “grounded in America’s founding principles and history.” It hosts a vast selection of materials and resources, including a collection of modern-day translations and commentaries on America’s core documents. It also provides graduate courses, seminars, scholarships and networks for civics and social studies teachers.
Each Constitution Day — September 17 — the center funds events across the nation commemorating it.
Justia: U.S. Supreme Court Center
The official web archive of Supreme Court decisions from 1791 to present. Includes full opinion documents, opinion summaries, briefs, oral argument audio and additional resources that contextualize cases.
Library of Congress
The national library. Containing over 173 million items, it is the largest library in the world. It has rights to all copyrighted U.S. books, as well as all non-classified government documents and primary texts — and much, much more. The library is open to the public for research, but materials can be accessed only onsite unless one is a high-ranking government official or library employee. There is however a vast online collection of over 14 million materials.
The online library’s content can be filtered by year, location, contributor, subject, language, format and collection series. Hundreds of thousands of materials focused on American citizenship and civics lie within the Library of Congress, accessible via the search bar and aforementioned tools.
National Archives
The ultimate store of primary historical sources and documents. The on-site research rooms in the Washington D.C. headquarters are available to the general public only by appointment, but detailed online search tools provide access to hundreds of thousands of documents, studies, records and works pertaining to American citizenship and civics.
Additionally, the National Archives oversee all Presidential Libraries and Federal Records centers, supply links to their content and online presence, and provides all necessary information for visiting Presidential Library museums and the National Archives Museum in D.C.
National Constitution Center
The United States Constitution is the primary text provided, customized with interactive features. Resources for the multimedia original curriculum centered around the Constitution also include excerpts of and links to founding documents, historical addresses and court cases related to the most prominent amendments, the top 15 Supreme Court cases discussed in an AP Government course, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Oyez Project
This is the unofficial online multimedia archive for all Supreme Court cases. For each case, Oyez links to the full documented opinion on Justia, provides a summary, provides a visual display of the Supreme Court justices who presided over the cases and their decision, as well as the list of advocates before the court, and dates of argument and decision. Individual cases are searchable in an in-site search tab, and can also be found by sorting for Chief Justices, individual justices, “courts” (Warren court, Rehnquist court, etc.), and advocates.
Quill Project
Working alongside ConSource, the Quill Project boasts a comprehensive collection of founding-era primary documents, as well as Congressional records, minutes and journals pertaining to the subject of the civil rights amendments — the 13th, 14th, 15th and 19th amendments — both before and after their passage.
Religion in America
A developing library of primary documents addressing major influences of religion on sociopolitics and vice versa. It currently contains 25 core documents that include excerpts from Colonial laws, founding documents, presidential addresses (Lincoln, F.D. Roosevelt, Reagan and Obama), letters and speeches from prominent religious and social leaders, and discourse from leading philosophers.
Additionally, it includes histories of 28 prominent religious sites in Americas as well as 13 letters, journal entries and addresses from women prevalent in religious circles from 1642 to 1836.
Teaching American History
Teaching American History hosts a comprehensive collection of 1,002 primary documents regarding the lead-up to the American Revolution, the Revolutionary War, the Founding, early government, major acts of government and the courts, major events and crises, major political movements and parties, and major cultural shifts. They are sorted both by theme on the main document page, and by era on the interactive timeline page.
Teaching American History also hosts scholarly analyses, artistic interpretations and educational dramas of the Constitutional Convention, the Presidential Election of 1800 and the Presidential Election of 1912, as well as the full Federalist series.
