Links

FROM THE MA CURRICULUM FRAMEWORKS IN HISTORY AND SOCIAL SCIENCES (2003)

APPENDIX A
Primary Documents for U.S. History*

Note: An asterisk (*) after the document indicates that it is required and may be included in the high school American history MCAS. All other documents are only suggested.

1. Magna Carta (1215)
2. Mayflower Compact (1620)*
3. Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641)
4. English Bill of Rights (1689)
5. John Locke’s Treatises of Civil Government (1690)
6. The Suffolk Resolves (1774)
7. Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)
8. Declaration of Independence (1776)*
9. the Massachusetts Constitution (1780)
10. the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786)
11. the Northwest Ordinance (1787)*
12. the United States Constitution (1787)*
13. selected Federalist Papers, such as numbers 1, 9 , 10*, 39, 51, and 78 (1787–1788)
14. the Bill of Rights (1791)*
15. President Washington’s Farewell Address (1796)
16. President Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address (1801)
17. Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America, Volume I (1835) and Volume II (1839).
18. The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions (1848)*
19. Frederick Douglass: Independence Day Speech at Rochester, New York (1852)*
20. Abraham Lincoln, “House Divided” speech (1858)
21. President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (1863)* and Second Inaugural Address (1865)*
22. Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883)
23. Booker T. Washington, The Atlanta Exposition Address (1895)
24. The Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles (1905)
25. Younghill Kang, East Goes West (1937)
26. President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech (1941)*
27. Justice Robert M. Jackson’s opinion for the Supreme Court in West Virginia State Board of
Education v. Barnette (1943)
28. Learned Hand, “The Spirit of Liberty” (1944)
29. President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (1961)
30. Reverend Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” (1963)*
and “I Have A Dream” speech (1963)*
31. Ronald Reagan, Speech at Moscow State University (1988)

APPENDIX B
Primary Documents for World History §

1. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War. Translation text by Richard Crawley.
2. Plato, The Republic. Translation text by Benjamin Jowett.
3. Aristotle, Politics.Translation text by Benjamin Jowett.
4. John Milton, Areopagitica (1644).
5. John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690).
6. Charles De Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748).
7. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality (1755).
8. Edmund Burke, “On Election to Parliament,” speech (1766).
9. National Assembly of France, “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” (1789).
10. Thomas Paine, Rights of Man (1791).
11. Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).
12. Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared With that of the Moderns,” speech (1819).
13. Thomas Macauley, “Jewish Disabilities,” speech (1833).
14. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859).
15. W.H. Auden, “September 1, 1939,” poem.
16. George Orwell, “England, Our England,” essay (1941)
17. Winston Churchill, “The Iron Curtain,” speech (1946).
18. United Nations, “International Declaration of Human Rights” (1948).
19. Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” lecture (1958). Hard to read, may need to enlarge (zoom in) text.
20. Nelson Mandela, “Statement at the Rivonia Trial,” (1964).
21. Andrei Sakharov, “Peace, Progress, and Human Rights,”speech (1975).
22. Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” essay (1978) - Amazon.com
23. Wei Jingsheng, “The Fifth Modernization,” essay (1978).
24. “An Open Letter to Citizen Mobutu Sese Seko,” (1980). With preface.
25. Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (1983).
26. Mario Vargas Llosa, “Latin America: The Democratic Option,” essay (1987).
27. Fang Lizhe, “Human Rights in China,” speech (1989).
28. Salman Rusdie, “In Good Faith,” essay (1989). - Amazon.com
29. Mario Varga Llosa, “Latin America: The Democratic Option,” speech (1990)
30. United Nations, Arab Human Development Report for the Arab Fund for Economic and Social
Development (2002)

§ Most of the world history documents can be found in Diane Ravitch and Abigail Thernstrom ed., The Democracy Reader: Classic and Modern Speeches, Essays, Poems, Declarations and Documents on Freedom and Human Rights Worldwide (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).