Women and the Homestead Act: Creating a Place for Themselves In the West

Young scholars examine how the Homestead Act impacted the economic opportunities of women. They research the Homestead Act, define Manifest Destiny, and prepare an exhibit featuring an outstanding woman living in their community.

Start a whole new life in a land known as the Wild Wild West! Learners analyze maps, personal accounts, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, songs, and video clips to uncover life under the Homestead Act. Using their new skills, class members role...

Life in the great, wide-open spaces of the West! Scholars analyze the reasons behind the vast movement to the Great Plains after the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Homestead Act. Using photographic, document, map, video, and...

The CROWN Act (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) is the subject of the lesson that asks groups to research the stories of five different women and share their insights in a jigsaw activity. Participants then craft...

Ambitiously spanning American history from 1865 to 1941, this video discusses and clarifies topics such as women's suffrage, the sinking of the Maine, and the development of America as a world empire. Maps and photographs will engage...

The American West may have been a wild place in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but they were far more progressive than eastern states in granting women the right to vote. A brief video outlines how Wyoming and other western...

Take a look at important images that depict the women's suffrage movement, the support for the Equal Rights Amendment, and wage equity for women over the last two centuries. As class members work through a lesson on primary source...

Six diverse activities make up a substantial unit on the women's rights movement in the United States, past and present. A few of the topics at hand: the fourteenth and nineteenth amendments, the Equal Pay Act, the Lily Ledbetter Act,...

How authors address issues of their societies is addressed in this very detailed lesson. After researching Toni Morrison and her work, groups create a dramatization based on a scene from one of Morrison’s novels and act it out. Class...

This 4-page article discusses the Homestead Act of 1862 and its effects.