By: Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology

Are your students among the more than half a million middle and high schoolers who participate in National History Day (NHD) each year? We’re here to help! Educators across the Smithsonian have gathered a rich set of collections connected to this year’s theme – Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas – that can support students in brainstorming and researching topic ideas. In this post, we’ve divided these collections into four subjects: Communication, Activism, Representation, and Science and Exploration.

The collections included in this post are just a sampling of the Lab’s digital museum resources and collections connected to this year’s theme. Looking for ways to help students begin searching the Lab for more? Share this two-minute video tutorial with your students to demonstrate how to search. As they begin, consider asking them to search for the hashtag #NHD, which will bring them to collections created for past NHD themes!

Communication

In the Anacostia Community Museum’s Ethel Payne’s Global Beat collection, students will explore the First Lady of the Black Press’s pioneering journalism career through her focus on civil rights, women’s rights, racial equality, and nuclear disarmament.

Looking for more collections to explore frontiers in communication? Check out:

• National Postal Museum’s Moving the Mail collection, which explores the history of postal transportation from 1775 to the present,
  
• Anacostia Community Museum’s Typewriter as Time Machine: Octavia Butler’s Typewriter collection, which introduces students to award-winning writer Octavia Butler, who wrote science fiction at a time when few African American writers did, and
• National Postal Museum’s Spies, Letters, and the American Revolution collection, which explores how American spies passed secret messages during the American Revolution.

Activism

In the National Portrait Gallery’s Our Struggle for Justice collection, students will find portraits of individuals whose thoughts and actions have improved our nation. Each featured individual is accompanied by a portrait, additional resources, and thought provoking-questions that can spark deeper inquiry.

Looking for more collections to explore frontiers in activism? Check out:

• National Museum of American History’s ​​Anna Dickinson: Orator and Political Firebrand collection, which explores the life of an abolitionist who became a prominent public speaker as a teenager,
• National Museum of American History’s Viral Histories collection, which gathers resources to explore how power, public health, and prejudice against Asian Americans have intersected throughout American history, and
• National Museum of American History’s Brown v. Board collection, full of resources to support student learning about Brown v. Board of Education.

Representation

In the National Museum of American History’s Woman Suffrage: The Ballot and Beyond collection, students will investigate how groups with limited political power have shaped and continue to shape American democracy through the lens of the woman suffrage movement.

Looking for more collections to explore frontiers in representation? Check out:

• Smithsonian Office of Government Relations’ four collections exploring Latinx members and women in congress through primary and secondary resources,
• Smithsonian Office of Educational Technology’s Cuban Balseros: An American Immigration Story collection, which uses an artwork and an artifact to spark critical thinking about historical and contemporary migration, and
• National Portrait Gallery’s Expanding Roles of Women collection, an interdisciplinary curriculum guide that explores the lives of women in America from 1600 to 1900.

Science and Exploration

In the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s Daniel Boone and American Ginseng: Truth and Legend collection, students will investigate the life of “frontier hero” Daniel Boone and his relationship to American ginseng.

Looking for more collections to explore frontiers in science and exploration? Check out:

• National Museum of Natural History’s Gratitude for Food collection, which explores the relationship between climate change, soil health, and food through history,
• National Portrait Gallery’s Portraiture and STEAM collection, which gathers portraits of STEAM leaders for students to research in greater detail, and
• Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s A Search for American Ginseng: The Field Adventures of Botanist E. Lucy Braun collection, which introduces students to the life and work of botanist and ecologist Emma Lucy Braun.

Image: Photograph of women and children at voter registration motorcade

This photograph is part of a scrapbook that was compiled in 1956 and 1957 by Frances Albrier during her term as president of the San Francisco Chapter of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW). The scrapbook highlights the Chapter’s efforts to register voters and educate Bay Area residents on the importance of voting as a part of the Citizenship Education Project which was jointly sponsored by the NCNW and the National Urban League.

National Museum of African American History and Culture