header image

Reconstruction

Bottles, Pins, and Horseshoes: Analyzing Artifacts from the Ransom Williams Farmstead Using Bloom’s Taxonomy

Material objects found at historical sites can be both intriguing and informative, especially when examined carefully in the classroom with students. A thorough discussion of any given artifact can be based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, a classifying device used to illustrate the hierarchy of thinking levels, from simple and concrete to complex and abstract. Analyzing artifacts from the Ransom Williams farmstead using Bloom's Taxonomy allows students on all levels to exercise the complete range of critical thinking skills while appreciating the cultural significance of historical objects.

After Slavery: Exercising the Rights of Citizenship in 19th-Century Texas

Students will explore a variety of county government records to learn how Ransom Williams, an African American living in post-Civil War, Texas, began the transition to freedom by exercising the right to vote and own property. Students will work with partners to analyze a 19th-century primary source document, then create their own county government documents and answer questions about Ransom Williams and the functions of county government.

African Americans in Texas

Journey through the African American culture and heritage in Texas, and discover a long and proud legacy that has undeniably shaped today’s Lone Star State mystique. Through hardships and triumphs, valor and determination, and influence and change, people of African descent have contributed greatly to our state’s development. Explore this website to discover these real stories and real places that define the history of Texas.

Texas Experiences: Mexican-American Heritage

The Texas Archive of the Moving Image's new lesson plan for grade 4 and grade 7 uses primary and secondary source audiovisual materials to examine and trace the history and experiences of Mexican-Americans in the Southwest and Texas from the sixteenth to twentieth century. The lesson plan uses archival footage to encourage students' understanding of how the Mexican-American experience ties to indigenous and Spanish culture and the impact of European colonization and settlement on native people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Chisholm Trail

In the decades following the Civil War, more than six million cattle were herded out of Texas in one of the greatest migrations of animals ever known. These 19th-century cattle drives laid the foundation for Texas's wildly successful cattle industry and helped elevate the state out of post-Civil War despair and poverty. Today, our search for an American identity continually leads us back to the vision of rugged and independent men and women of the cattle drive era.
avatar-url