Chief Joseph, Nez Perces, from the American Indian Chiefs series (N2) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands

In 1888, Allen & Ginter began to release cigarette card sets as promotional items for its cigarette brands. Most part of the collection consisting of illustrated cards with a few collections of photographs. Topics varied from birds and wild animals to American Indian chiefs or flags of the world. Allen & Ginter's baseball cards were the first of the tobacco era baseball cards ever produced for distribution on a national level. The most popular and highly sought after of these sets is the N28 and N29 "World's Champions" series, released in 1887.

In the second grade, the student will examine the lives of notable Americans who expanded peoples’ rights and freedoms in the American system of government. Students participate in shared and individual research using biographies and informational text historic examples of honesty, courage, patriotism, self-sacrifice, and other admirable character traits seen in citizens and leaders including Abigail Adams, Francis Scott Key, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Chief Joseph, Eleanor Roosevelt, Fred Korematsu, Jackie Robinson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, César Chávez, and Senator Daniel Inouye. Students analyze the significance of historic places including the White House, the United States Capitol, the United States Supreme Court, the Washington Monument, and The Lincoln Memorial. Students commemorate months designated to the contributions the American nation of significant groups to the history of including National Hispanic History Month, Native American Heritage Month, Black History Month, Women’s History Month, and Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month. Students understand chronological sequencing and the connection between historic events and individuals through the creation of basic timelines.

Allen and Ginter, a tobacco manufacturing company founded in 1865 by John Allen and Lewis Ginter in Richmond, Virginia, created the first cigarette cards for collecting and trading in the United States. The first tobacco company to employ female labor, by 1886 they had 1,100 employees, predominantly girls, who rolled the cigarettes. The Company history ended when in 1880, Allen and Ginter offered a prize for the invention of the machine able to roll cigarettes. Inventor James Albert Bonsack won the prize. But all but one of the large tobacco manufacturers, including Allen and Ginter itself, declined to buy the machine because it was not 100% reliable. James Buchanan Duke did buy the machine invention in 1885 and by 1890 he had consolidated his four major competitors, including Allen & Ginter, and formed the American Tobacco Company. The "Allen & Ginter Company" was no more, but Lewis Ginter sat on the board of the American Tobacco Company.

Alois Senefelder, the inventor of lithography, introduced the subject of colored lithography in 1818. Printers in other countries, such as France and England, were also started producing color prints. The first American chromolithograph—a portrait of Reverend F. W. P. Greenwood—was created by William Sharp in 1840. Chromolithographs became so popular in American culture that the era has been labeled as "chromo civilization". During the Victorian times, chromolithographs populated children's and fine arts publications, as well as advertising art, in trade cards, labels, and posters. They were also used for advertisements, popular prints, and medical or scientific books.