Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,988 items

History Now Essay

African American Religious Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement

Clarence Taylor

Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Clarence Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Modern African American History, Religion, and Civil Rights at Baruch College, The City University of New York. His books include The Black Churches of Brooklyn (1994), Knocking at Our Own Door...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Native American Discoveries of Europe

Daniel K. Richter

Economics, Geography, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Native Americans discovered Europe at the same time Europeans discovered America. As far as we know, no birch bark canoes caught the gulf stream to Glasgow, and no Native American conquistadores planted flags at Florence, but just as...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

Teaching American History to Muslim Exchange Students

Ted Widmer

Government and Civics

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Everyone knows that the election of 2004 marked a pivotal turning point for the American people. That point was brought home forcefully by the experience of teaching American history that summer to a group of twenty-one young Muslim...

Appears in:

1 | Elections Fall 2004

History Now Essay

Coming to America: Ellis Island and New York City

Vincent J. Cannato

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

New York City is a kind of archipelago, a Philippines on the Hudson River. Only one borough—the Bronx—is actually attached to the American mainland. There are some forty islands in the city beyond Manhattan, Staten Island, and Long...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change

Linda R. Monk

Government and Civics

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

"We the People?" asked Patrick Henry at the Virginia convention to ratify the new Constitution in 1788. "Who authorized them to speak the language of ‘We the People,’ instead of ‘We the States’?" [1] Looking back, we can be grateful...

Appears in:

13 | The Constitution Fall 2007

Essay

The Roaring Twenties

Joshua Zeitz

The 1920s heralded a dramatic break between America’s past and future. Before World War I the country remained culturally and psychologically rooted in the nineteenth century, but in the 1920s America seemed to break its wistful...

History Now Essay

The Impact of Title IX

Barbara Winslow

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

One of the great achievements of the women’s movement was the enactment of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The law states: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be...

Appears in:

23 | Turning Points in American Sports Spring 2010

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...

Essay

Exploration

Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Benjamin Sacks

Geography, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, World History

We often speak of America as "unknown," except to its own inhabitants, in the Middle Ages. But so, in a sense, was Europe, which hardly figured on the maps and in the calculations of the immensely richer, more populous, and...

History Now Essay

Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity

Phillip Lopate

Literature

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Strictly speaking, all American novels (with the exception of those written by Native Americans) are in one way or another immigrant fiction. But we usually think of immigrant fiction more narrowly as the encounter of the foreign-born...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

Site Search

90,988 items

African American Religious Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement

Native American Discoveries of Europe

Teaching American History to Muslim Exchange Students

Coming to America: Ellis Island and New York City

Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change

The Roaring Twenties

The Impact of Title IX

Populism and Agrarian Discontent

Exploration

Immigrant Fiction: Exploring an American Identity

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