In this article, the authors describe the eight-day Summer Institute, a part of an on-going "American History as Dialogue" Project funded by the United States Department of Education Teaching American History grant program. The focus of this project is both historical inquiry and the history of race in America. The goal of the project is to enhance teachers' desire and ability to engage in historical inquiry so that they will be more likely to engage their own students, in grades 3-11, in the construction of historical knowledge and understandings using history's most natural evidence--the stories that are told by common and uncommon people who were present at or keenly affected by key events in American history. (Contains 22 notes.)