Introduction | American Yawp MS

What Is This Project?

American Yawp MS is a free, open-source American history textbook for middle school students (grades 6–8). It's adapted from The American Yawp, the collaboratively built college-level textbook used by hundreds of thousands of students nationwide.

This project is built on a simple belief: every student deserves access to a history textbook that treats them like a thinker, not a test-taker. One that tells real stories, includes the voices that traditional textbooks leave out, and asks hard questions instead of easy ones.

And it should be free forever.

Why We Built This

History shouldn't be boring. And it shouldn't cost money.

Most middle school history textbooks are expensive, dry, and sanitized. They present history as a list of facts to memorize rather than a story to wrestle with. They skim over complexity, avoid controversy, and leave out the perspectives of women, Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, immigrants, and working people—the very people who built this country.

Worse, many teachers can't afford to give every student a textbook. Or they're stuck with outdated editions that reflect the biases and blind spots of decades past.

American Yawp MS is designed to solve all of that.

What Makes It Different

Every chapter includes:

Narrative storytelling — History told through people, scenes, and drama, not dry summaries
"Story Behind the Story" callouts — The fascinating details that make history stick
Primary source voices — Actual quotes from the people who lived it
Multiple Perspectives boxes — Competing viewpoints on contested events
"Whose Voices Were Left Out?" sections — Explicitly addressing exclusion and power
Stop and Think questions — Analytical prompts, not recall quizzes
Vocabulary boxes — Key terms with student-friendly definitions
Chapter activities — Debates, rankings, and evidence-based discussions

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

This project would not exist without The American Yawp, the groundbreaking open-source college textbook edited by Joseph L. Locke and Ben Wright and built by over 300 historians. The American Yawp proved that a free, collaboratively built textbook could be as rigorous, engaging, and widely used as any commercial alternative. We are deeply grateful to the editors, authors, and contributors who made that work possible. This middle school edition is our attempt to bring that same spirit of openness, rigor, and accessibility to younger students.

How It's Licensed

American Yawp MS is licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0. That means:

Anyone can use it, share it, and adapt it
No one can lock it behind a paywall
It can never be sold on Teachers Pay Teachers or any other platform as a paid resource
Any adaptation must remain open and free under the same license

This ensures the material stays free forever. If you believe history education should be universally accessible, this license is your guarantee.

Who We're Building This For

This project is for:

Students who deserve to see themselves in history and to wrestle with its complexity
Teachers who want high-quality materials without breaking the budget
Homeschooling families who want rigorous, engaging content they can trust
Anyone who believes history education should be free, accurate, and inclusive

How You Can Help

This project needs you. One person can only do so much. If any of this sounds like you, please reach out:

Teachers who want to pilot chapters in their classrooms and give feedback on what works
History educators who want to write or review chapter content
Curriculum designers who want to build lessons, projects, and activities around the chapters
Special education teachers who can help ensure the material is truly accessible to all learners
ELL/ESL specialists who can help adapt content for multilingual classrooms
Designers and developers who want to improve the reading experience
Students who are willing to tell us what's engaging and what's not

No contribution is too small. A typo fix matters. A student saying "this part was confusing" matters. A teacher saying "my kids loved this activity" matters.

Visit the GitHub repository to contribute, report issues, or just say hello.