Search | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

90,986 items

History Now Essay

Everyone’s Backyard: The Love Canal Chemical Disaster

Amy M. Hay

Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

It all started quietly. There were no alerts, no sirens, no evacuation plans, no reports from Jim Cantore on the Weather Channel. Most people living in the LaSalle neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, first heard about problems in...

Appears in:

40 | Disasters in Modern American History Fall 2014

History Now Essay

The Great 1927 Mississippi River Flood

John M. Barry

Geography, Government and Civics, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

In the latter part of August 1926, the sky darkened over much of the central United States and a heavy and persistent rain began to fall. Rain pelted first Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma, then edged eastward into Iowa...

Appears in:

40 | Disasters in Modern American History Fall 2014

Essay

The Sanctity of the Law: Lincoln’s Legal Career

Steven Mintz

Before he became president, Abraham Lincoln supported himself and his family as an attorney. For nearly a quarter of a century, he was a country lawyer, who frequently traveled for up to six months a year through Illinois’s 8th...

Essay

Lincoln and Emancipation: Black Enfranchisement in 1863 Louisiana

Richard J. Carwardine

Government and Civics

As the president of a fractured nation, Abraham Lincoln faced no issue more perplexing than that of restoring the rebel states to the Union. Reconstruction during wartime was, he judged, "the greatest question ever presented to...

History Now Essay

Revolutionary Philadelphia

Ray Raphael

Geography, Government and Civics

The image is so clear in our minds, seen first in elementary school and reinforced countless times since: a few dozen gentlemen with powdered wigs and period suits (coats, waistcoats, and knee-length breeches) gathered in a large...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

The Passage of the Civil Rights Act

Clay Risen

Government and Civics

When the Civil Rights Act passed fifty years ago, it was immediately hailed as one of the most important pieces of legislation of the twentieth century. Not only did it ban discrimination in hotels, restaurants, public parks, schools,...

Appears in:

41 | The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Legislating Equality Winter 2015

History Now Essay

Civil Rights Leadership and the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Clarence Taylor

Government and Civics

The most important social protest movement of the twentieth century was the civil rights movement, which provided countless numbers of people the opportunity to become involved in the struggle for racial equality. The civil rights...

Appears in:

41 | The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Legislating Equality Winter 2015

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Dispatches from the Front: The Civil Rights Act and the Pursuit of Greater Freedom in a Small Southern City

Charles W. McKinney

Government and Civics

The civil rights protests that enveloped the nation in the summer of 1964 occurred against the backdrop of the slow, uncertain progress of the legislation that would eventually become known as the Civil Rights Act. As activists across...

Appears in:

41 | The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Legislating Equality Winter 2015

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Teaching the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Charles L. Zelden

As is the case with most historical events, the key to teaching the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA) is context. The CRA by itself is simply a piece of congressional legislation—structurally complicated and textually byzantine. Still,...

Appears in:

41 | The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Legislating Equality Winter 2015

History Now Essay

The Role of China in US History

Warren I. Cohen

Economics, Government and Civics, World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

Today, our homes are filled with countless products "Made in China." Long before the American Revolution, thanks to British trade with China, many colonists were able to purchase Chinese furniture, wallpapers, silks, and porcelains....

Appears in:

42 | The Role of China in US History Spring 2015

Site Search

90,986 items

Everyone’s Backyard: The Love Canal Chemical Disaster

The Great 1927 Mississippi River Flood

The Sanctity of the Law: Lincoln’s Legal Career

Lincoln and Emancipation: Black Enfranchisement in 1863 Louisiana

Revolutionary Philadelphia

The Passage of the Civil Rights Act

Civil Rights Leadership and the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Dispatches from the Front: The Civil Rights Act and the Pursuit of Greater Freedom in a Small Southern City

Teaching the Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Role of China in US History

Stay up to date, and subscribe to our quarterly newsletter.