Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

1,977 items

Essay

World War I

Jennifer D. Keene

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

War swept across Europe in the summer of 1914, igniting a global struggle that would eventually take nine million lives. World War I pitted the Allies (initially composed of Britain, France, Belgium, Serbia, and Russia, and eventually...

History Now Essay

The League of Women Voters: A Century of Voter Engagement

Barbara Winslow

The League of Women Voters (LWV) was founded in 1920 by American suffragists, just months before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the constitutional right to vote after more than seventy years of struggle. Over...

Appears in:

56 | The Nineteenth Amendment and Beyond Spring 2020

History Now Essay

Adella Hunt Logan: Suffragist and Educator

Adele Logan Alexander

My new book, Princess of the Hither Isles , traces the life of my paternal grandmother, Adella Hunt Logan, who’s intrigued me for as long as I can remember. During my childhood, she felt like a major presence in my life. Not only was...

Appears in:

54 | African American Women in Leadership Summer 2019

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

The Escape of Black Women during the American Revolution

Karen Cook Bell

In 1961, Morgan State University historian Dr. Benjamin Quarles published the now classic study The Negro in the American Revolution , which became the definitive account of the role African Americans played in the War for...

Appears in:

63 | The Declaration of Independence and the Long Struggle for Equality in America Summer 2022

History Now Essay

Memorializing the Gravesites of Twentieth-Century African Americans

Karla F. C. Holloway

Excerpts reprinted by permission of Karla F. C. Holloway from her book Passed On: African American Mourning Stories (Duke University Press, 2003). I wandered for an hour trying to find Harriet Tubman (1913). I didn’t mind the time. I...

Appears in:

62 | The Honored Dead: African American Cemeteries, Graveyards, and Burial Grounds Spring 2022

Lesson Plan

The Big Bang! The Birth of Rock and Roll

Art, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

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

Overview In the early 1950s, a new form of music exploded onto the scene, exciting a growing teenage audience while startling many others who preferred the music of Bing Crosby and Patti Page. Popularized by disc jockey Alan Freed in...

History Now Essay

Allies for Emancipation? Black Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln

Manisha Sinha

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Abraham Lincoln was not an original advocate of abolition. In fact we know that his journey to what he called "the central act of my administration, and the great event of the nineteenth century" was a relatively slow, though...

Appears in:

18 | Abraham Lincoln in His Time and Ours Winter 2008

History Now Essay

First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare

Betty Boyd Caroli

Government and Civics

The US Constitution assigns no duties or responsibilities to the president’s spouse. Every woman had to define for herself the role she wanted to play. From the blank slate that Martha Washington encountered in 1789, the job gradually...

Appears in:

35 | America’s First Ladies Spring 2013

History Now Essay

FDR’s First Inaugural Address

Davis W. Houck

Economics, Government and Civics

Several years ago when I was researching a very different subject at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York, I happened across several archival documents related to FDR’s first inaugural address. As a...

Appears in:

36 | Great Inaugural Addresses Summer 2013

Essay

Populism and Agrarian Discontent

Michael Kazin

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Today, the Gilded Age evokes thoughts of “robber baron” industrialists, immigrants toiling long hours in factories for little pay, massive strikes that were often put down by force, and political corruption in both big cities and the...

Site Search

1,977 items

World War I

The League of Women Voters: A Century of Voter Engagement

Adella Hunt Logan: Suffragist and Educator

The Escape of Black Women during the American Revolution

Memorializing the Gravesites of Twentieth-Century African Americans

The Big Bang! The Birth of Rock and Roll

Allies for Emancipation? Black Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln

First Ladies’ Contributions to Political Issues and the National Welfare

FDR’s First Inaugural Address

Populism and Agrarian Discontent

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