Social Studies

When Michael's aunt passes away, she leaves behind a letter entitled "Who I am, what I've done, and who you are."

It reveals a story that will change everything. It starts with Michael's grandfather Leroy, a black officer in World War I who charged into a battle zone not once, but three times, to save wounded men. His fellow soldiers insisted he deserved special commendations for his bravery, but because of their racial barriers, he would go unacknowledged. Now it's up to Michael to change that.

Early in the twentieth century, most Asian immigrants bound for America disembarked at a rocky island in San Francisco Bay. At the Angel Island Immigration Station, they were scrutinized, physically examined, interrogated, and confined behind barbed wire in crowded dormitories. Detainees often waited weeks or months to be processed. Those who passed inspection were allowed to enter the country known to many Chinese as Gold Mountain. Others, less fortunate, were sent back home or even died in detention.

In 1964, Mississippi civil rights groups banded together to fight Jim Crow laws in a state where only 6.4 percent of eligible black voters were registered. Testing a bold new strategy, they recruited students from across the United States. That summer these young volunteers defied segregation by living with local black hosts, opening Freedom Schools to educate disenfranchised adults and their children, and canvassing door-to-door to register voters.

It's 1793, and there's an invisible killer roaming the streets of Philadelphia. The city's residents are fleeing in fear. This killer has a name—yellow fever—but everything else about it is a mystery. Its cause is unknown, and there is no cure.