DC History Center

Best for: 9th-12th grade students; college and university students

Please check back for periodic additions and additional formats.

Activities

Teachable Moments

“Teachable Moment” essays start with a document, map, or image, that invites close analysis to understand its deeper lessons. The features are also windows into how their historian/authors analyze and interpret primary sources to discover layers of context and meaning. Click on the linked titles to download PDFs of the following “Teachable Moment” essays:

• Rothman, Adam.  “Georgetown University and the Business of Slavery.” Washington History 29, no. 2 (2017): 18-22.

• Reidy, Joseph P. “The Winding Path to Freedom under the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of April 16, 1862.” Washington History 26, no. 2 (2014): 18-22.

• Shoenfeld, Sarah Jane. “Blockbusting” and Racial Turnover in Mid-Century D.C.” Washington History 30, no. 2 (2018): 50-54.

• Rohal, Brian. “Mobilizing the Community in an Era Before Social Media.” Washington History 28, no. 1 (2016): 49-52.

• Asch, Chris Myers. “The Rage of the Civil Rights Era.” Washington History 27, no. 2 (2015): 20-24.

Published Material

These Washington History articles are great for students in older grades, including at the college level, who are doing research on local topics, as well as context for the adults who are guiding them. Click on the linked titles to download PDFs of Washington History articles relating to these topics:

D.C. voting rights

• Diner, Steven J. “The City under the Hill.” Washington History 8, no. 1 (1996): 54-61.

Retrocession

• Richards, Mark David. “The Debates over the Retrocession of the District of Columbia, 1801-2004.” Washington History 16, no. 1 (2004): 54-82.

the Pearl Affair

• Harrold, Stanley C. “The Pearl Affair: The Washington Riot of 1848.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 50 (1980): 140-60.

Compensated emancipation

• Mitchell, Mary. “”I Held George Washington’s Horse”: Compensated Emancipation in the District of Columbia.” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 63/65 (1963): 221-29.

the Civil War and Reconstruction

• Murray, Martin G. “Traveling with the Wounded: Walt Whitman and Washington’s Civil War Hospitals.” Washington History 8, no. 2 (1996): 58-73.

Local life during the World Wars

• Gordon, Martin K., Barry R. Sude, and Ruth Ann Overbeck. “Chemical Testing in the Great War: The American University Experiment Station.” Washington History 6, no. 1 (1994): 28-45
• Pryde, Marion Jackson, Markus Ring, Damon Cordom, and Loretta Carter Hanes. “Growing up in Washington II: Great Depression and World War II.” Washington History 12, no. 2 (2000): 17-21.

Impact of transportation technology on the growth of the city

•   Schrag, Zachary M. “Mapping Metro, 1955-1968: Urban, Suburban, and Metropolitan Alternatives.” Washington History 13, no. 1 (2001): 4-23.

Immigration and neighborhood development

• Rodriguez, Ana Patricia. ‘”Becoming `Wachintonians’: Salvadorans in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area.” Washington History 28, no. 2 (2016): 3-12. 
• Aviles, Quique. “A Third Citizenship.” Washington History 31, no. 1/2 (2019): 29-34.

On-going struggle for self-determination

• Musgrove, George Derek. “‘Statehood Is Far More Difficult’: The Struggle for D.C. Self-Determination, 1980–2017.” Washington History 29, no. 2 (2017): 3-17.

Washington History magazine

The number one resource for issues relating to local life in the District of Columbia is Washington History, which the Historical Society has published since 1989. Washington History is filled with scholarly articles, reviews, and a rich array of images. It is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists. The full runs of Washington History (1989-present) and its predecessor publication the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1988) are available through JSTOR, an online archive to which many educational institutions subscribe. It’s also easy to set up a personal JSTOR account, which allows free online reading of six articles per month from the vast array of JSTOR journals. Membership in the Historical Society at the Membership Plus level includes full access to the entire run of both of our publications.

Click here for the direct link to explore the full run of Washington History.

Click here for the direct link to explore the full run of the Records of the Columbia Historical Society. ALL Records articles from 1897 to 1924 are available for free online access as well as free PDF downloads with no membership or JSTOR account required.