News K-8 Educators Offered Unique NEH Summer Institute Program on The Making of America The Making of America: Colonial Era to Reconstruction is a virtual, weeklong 2021 NEH Summer Institute that offers K–8 educators the opportunity to explore the people, ideas, and events that made America into a cultural, social, and...
News Book Breaks in February Explore Slavery, Desegregation, and Self-Determination Since the summer of 2020, Gilder Lehrman Book Breaks has featured the most exciting history scholars in America discussing their books live with host William Roka followed by a Q&A with home audiences. This February, the books...
Program/Event Collection Programs Our Collection Programs offer opportunities to learn from and work with primary sources from the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Inside the Vault Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection is a zoom presentation of...
Video: Read Along "Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968" This historical fiction picture book presents the story of nine-year-old Lorraine Jackson, who in 1968 witnessed the Memphis sanitation strike—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final stand for justice before his assassination—when her...
News Free Workshop Series & Symposium in Partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations In partnership with World101 from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), we are pleased to offer four free digital professional development sessions and a symposium in spring 2021. On MARCH 6 the first workshop on American...
News Register Now for Spring History School Building on the success of our summer and fall Gilder Lehrman History School , we are pleased to offer free courses this spring for elementary, middle, and high school students. History School provides engaging live interactive...
Video: Inside The Vault Inside the Vault: The Lives and Works of Phillis Wheatley and Elizabeth Keckley Literature 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+ On the February 4, 2021 session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection , our curators talk with English Language Arts educator Jeanette Providence and Hamilton cast member Krystal Mackie about the lives...
History Now Essay Yellow Fever 1793 Richard Brookhiser Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Late in August 1793 Philadelphia was struck by a strange and virulent disease. Patients developed aches, chills, and fever, vomited black bile, and turned yellow. Some recovered, but many died. The yellow fever, as it was called, had... Appears in: 58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020
History Now Essay The Influenza of 1918 and the Coronavirus of 2020: Some Parallels and Differences John M. Barry Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Sometime prior to late January 1918, a virus jumped species from birds to humans, probably after passing through another mammal. It spawned a lethal pandemic. Sometime prior to late December 2019, a virus jumped species from bats to... Appears in: 58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020
History Now Essay Invisible Threats and the Politics of Disaster: Three Mile Island and Covid-19 Natasha Zaretsky Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math An invisible, potentially deadly threat. Elected officials saying one thing, and public health experts saying another. A citizenry hungry for information and guidance. A cultural divide between those who are afraid of the threat and... Appears in: 58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020
History Now Essay History in the Making: COVIDCalls and the COVID-19 Pandemic Scott Gabriel Knowles and Bucky Stanton Disasters are now a permanent feature of American life—no longer confined to predictable seasons or geographies—in the era of hyperglobalization and its related climate change, a disaster in one part of the world affects all of us.... Appears in: 58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020
News Get to Know Sergio de Alba, 2020 National History Teacher of the Year Sergio de Alba, a teacher at R. M. Miano Elementary School in Los Baños, California, was named the 2020 National History Teacher of the Year and will be honored in a recorded ceremony on October 7, 2020. Register here for A Tribute to...
History Now Essay Excerpt from Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, "Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia, in the Year 1793" (1794), with an introduction by James G. Basker Absalom Jones and Richard Allen Paragraphs Appears in: 58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020
History Now Essay The Importance of Studying Disasters: Ideas and Advice for the Classroom Liz Skilton I was sitting in Algebra when I heard the news that an incident had occurred in New York City. My history teacher, Mr. Turner, appeared suddenly at the door—interrupting the Pythagorean theorem lesson—to say that something was... Appears in: 58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020
History Now Essay From the Editor Carol Berkin A disaster often reveals as much about the society wrestling with it as it does about its origins and its physical effects. If scientists focus on the source of the danger—a virus, bacteria, climatic shifts, or disease-carrying... Appears in: 58 | Resilience, Recovery, and Resurgence in the Wake of Disasters Fall 2020
Spotlight on: Primary Source Black Volunteers in the Nation’s First Epidemic, 1793 The new republic was only four years old, its capital recently established in Philadelphia, when the country suffered its first catastrophic epidemic. Yellow fever broke out in August 1793 and ravaged the city for three months, only...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Map Proves It, ca. 1919 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Supporters of women’s rights used maps such as the one shown here to demonstrate where women were allowed to vote, when they won that right, and which elections they could vote in. The source of this map is unknown. Originally printed...
Spotlight on: Primary Source An appeal for suffrage support, 1871 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 The National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee was formed in the spring of 1871. The Washington DC-based committee pledged to act as the “centre of all action upon Congress and the country.” The group was also dedicated to the...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Voting restrictions for African Americans, 1944 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 In 1944 a group of southern editors and writers documented cases of voter suppression in southern states. They took this step because, in the presidential election of 1944, only 28 percent of potential voters in the South participated...
Spotlight on: Primary Source Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper: Sedition charges, 1815 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 Even though the Sedition Act of 1798 had expired in 1801, individuals could still be charged with sedition. On January 20, 1815, Thomas Rowe and Joshua Hooper, publishers of the Massachusetts newspaper The Yankee , printed an article...
Spotlight on: Primary Source The Sedition Act, 1798 Government and Civics 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 On August 14, 1798, the Columbian Centinel , a Boston newspaper aligned with the Federalist Party, printed this copy of the Sedition Act. It was the last in a series of legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the...
About page John C. McManus Wins the Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize Winner of the Seventh Annual Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History Announced Award Program Available Online Thursday, November 5, 2020 New York, NY, September 30, 2020 – The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History announced...