What do national holidays represent and how do they come to be? Using Martin Luther King Day as an example, follow how congress establishes the holiday and the president signs it into law. Primary sources included are memos to President...

The United States, over hundreds of years, has come to observe a national holiday for giving thanks: Thanksgiving. This set of primary resources containing images and documents provides a window into this time period.

What did they eat at the first Thanksgiving? Which president made Thanksgiving a federal holiday? Get Thanksgiving trivia to share around the table. Over the centuries, that briefly-mentioned feast week has taken on a life of its own,...

Read about the first of FDR's "Fireside Chats" that he delivered over the radio with an image of the microphone used.

The origins of how Father's Day became a national holiday are discussed on this site.

Lesson plan that teaches the roles that jazz music and jazz musicians played in the war effort and that demonstrates the effect that the war had on jazz in America.