Sandlots & CivicsSpring Training EditionFollow your curiosity into books, archives, museums, research collections, local places, or a next step of your own. These are invitations, not extra assignments.
These focused links extend ideas from the opening journey. Each one leaves Sandlots & Civics and opens the credited institution’s website in a new tab.
Keep this page open so it is easy to return.
What can one sandlot reveal about how a growing town makes room for play?
Library of Congress · externalHow can people form routines in a place they may not control?
National Baseball Hall of Fame · externalWhat did Rickwood hold for Willie Mays, the Black Barons, and the community that came to watch?
National Archives · externalWhat can an official order explain—and what can’t it?
Smithsonian · externalWho decides that an everyday story belongs in a national collection?
The stories in Sandlots & Civics survive because people and institutions preserve them.
Libraries, archives, museums, research organizations, historic ballparks, and local collections protect photographs, documents, objects, recordings, memories, and places—so each generation can ask new questions of the past.
Explore online. Plan a visit. Look for history where you live.
Places to begin
Foundational collection
Books, photographs, newspapers, maps, manuscripts, recordings, and films offer countless ways into the American story. Teaching with Primary Sources helps learners observe closely, ask questions, and investigate further.
Barat Education Foundation has a longstanding relationship with the Library of Congress and Teaching with Primary Sources in support of civic education.
Public records
Follow laws, public decisions, rights, service, and the work of government through original records created across American life.
Follow the game
Museum & research center
Meet the game through artifacts, photographs, documents, oral histories, and the generations of people who shaped it.
Museum & community history
Encounter Black baseball as a story of skill, enterprise, culture, community, and change in American life.
Research community
Explore careful research and a community of people asking deeper questions about baseball’s people, places, records, and meaning.
Closer to home
Look for local museums, historical societies, university collections, preserved ballparks, neighborhood archives, and family collections. A photograph, scorecard, recording, or remembered story can hold a doorway into a much larger history.
The institutions and collections named here are recognized for the history they preserve. Links do not imply sponsorship or endorsement.