In July 1998, a small group of historians and classroom teachers met in Watertown, Massachusetts to begin planning for a groundbreaking project&emdash;the creation of curriculum sourcebooks to bring recent scholarship in African American history to middle and high school teachers and students. The educators present were knowledgeable about this history and all were committed to identifying primary sources and to writing lessons placing African American history in its rightful place within “mainstream” U.S. history.

For several years before this meeting, these scholars and teachers had been part of a larger program of professional development organized and run by Primary Source, a nonprofit teacher center in Massachusetts that was formed sixteen years ago to provide teaching and learning that is historically accurate and inclusive of the multiple voices in U.S. history.

Among the many challenges facing teachers of students K-12, one of the most important and most difficult is that of engaging them actively and passionately in learning about the past. In order for teachers to do this effectively, they need to continually improve their knowledge and renew their enthusiasm for content and pedagogy.

To help educators, Primary Source has offered seminars, summer institutes, workshops and conferences to teachers in Massachusetts and other New England states. In all of these programs, scholars work with teachers and Primary Source staff to provide an experience that is, according to one participant, “stimulating, exciting and inspiring.” We feel a particular responsibility to foster a climate of intellectual exchange between university scholars and classroom teachers.

Primary Source offers programs on colonial America , the nineteenth-century West, and topics from the twentieth century. Our programs also raise awareness of the histories and cultures of other countries. World history studies include China , West Africa , and diversity in the Islamic world. Most recently, as part of a Teaching American History grant, Primary Source has developed programs that place the history of the United States within the context of world history. The Primary Source library houses an extensive collection of books, videos, catalogues, maps, and bibliographies in these content areas. There are curriculum guides as well, often created by teachers taking an institute for graduate credit.

Our programming in United States history has emphasized African American studies. The program began in 1995 with a weekend seminar. Then, for several years, Primary Source offered a summer institute entitled “Black Yankees, New England ’s Hidden Roots.” Later, the course content was broadened and the name changed to “Making Freedom, African Americans in U.S. History.” As we expanded the program, we continued to hold two important assumptions:

• African American history must be understood and taught as part of mainstream U.S. history; and
• many teachers are eager for new knowledge about this part of our collective past.

With each successive institute, these assumptions have been reconfirmed.

In 1998, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Primary Source gathered a small group of historians and classroom teachers and began what became a collaborative six-year research and writing project involving many scholars and numerous teachers. In the spring of 2004, Heinemann Publishing released Making Freedom: African Americans in U.S. History, a series of five curriculum sourcebooks introducing materials from the fifteenth century through the modern civil rights movement of the twentieth century. Each book includes a CD of primary sources&emdash;diaries, broadsides, slave narratives, maps, government documents, cartoons, photographs, even art and music. These books present African American history as the story of social agency and intellectual achievement crucial to the development of the United States .

In the summer of 2004, Primary Source was able to offer a national institute to introduce teachers selected from schools across the country to the history revealed in the Making Freedom sourcebooks. With funding again from the NEH, and support and space from Tufts University , this four-week institute was organized around several themes: economies of slavery and freedom; African Americans and the law; building community; and African American images and artistic expression. In addition to hearing from scholars, teachers traveled to New Bedford to learn about blacks in the seafaring trades, and walked the Black Heritage Trail in Boston . They toured the National Center of Afro-American Artists, revisited Eyes on the Prize with one of its creators, and watched a reenactment of a former slave who became an abolitionist.

Participating teachers have written to tell us how they are using the summer experience. Some have begun their own research, some have reflected on their teaching strategies and have new ideas for projects and lesson plans, some made and kept new friendships, one, at least, decided to return to school for a master’s degree in history.

As Primary Source plans for future courses and events, the impact of our programs and scholarship in African American history continues to infuse much of our work. This holds true not only for the work in United States history but also in our efforts to help teachers place the history of this country in the larger context of world history.

For more information about the work of Primary Source and for more details about the Sourcebooks, please visit our web site at <http://www.primarysource.org>.