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Spotlight on: Primary Source

“Defence of Fort McHenry” or “The Star-Spangled Banner,” 1814

5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

In September 1814, Francis Scott Key, an attorney and DC insider, watched the American flag rise over Baltimore, Maryland’s Fort McHenry from a British ship in the harbor. Key had been negotiating the release of an American captive...

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, 1963

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On the morning of September 15, 1963, Denise McNair (age 11), Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Cynthia Wesley (age 14), and Carole Robertson (age 14) were killed when nineteen sticks of dynamite exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist...

Interactive

US Immigration since 1850: A Statistical and Visual Timeline

Spotlight on: Primary Source

Anti-Communist Trading Cards, 1951

Government and Civics

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On June 25, 1950, war broke out on the Korean peninsula when the Soviet-backed Communist forces in North Korea invaded the recently founded democratic republic of South Korea. Following a unanimous UN resolution condemning the...

Lesson Plan

Late 19th- and Early 20th-Century Immigration and Migration: Pairing Text and Visual Materials

Art

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Click to download this five-lesson unit.

Spotlight on: Primary Source

D-Day correspondence between a soldier and his wife, 1944

On June 6, 1944, as Allied forces numbering approximately 160,000 troops landed along fifty miles of coastline in Normandy, France, Moe Weiner, a native of Brooklyn, was serving in the US Army Quartermaster Corps in England. He did...

Essay

From the Editor

Carol Berkin

In both scholarly and popular literature on American entrepreneurship, the focus is often on nineteenth-century inventors like John Deere and Eli Whitney or on “robber barons” like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius...

Special Topics

United States Citizenship Test

The Citizenship Test Civics and American History The Gilder Lehrman Institute is proud to offer a customized version of the US citizenship exam for K–12 classrooms and learners of all ages. Citizenship is a unifying thread that connects all...

Video: Book Breaks

Jon Grinspan - "Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War"

Government and Civics

Jon Grinspan is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Order Wide Awake at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link...

Video: Book Breaks

Jorell A. Meléndez Badillo - "Puerto Rico: A National History"

World History

Jorell Meléndez-Badillo is assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Order Puerto Rico at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase...