538 items
Jeffrey Sammons is Professor of History at New York University. He is the author of Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society (1988) and the co-author, with John H. Morrow, Jr., of Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War:...
African Americans in the Revolutionary War
From the first shots of the American Revolutionary War until the ultimate victory at Yorktown, black men significantly contributed to securing independence for the United States from Great Britain. On March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks,...
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On My Way to War in Iraq
The 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were followed by the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole , then of course September 11, 2001. Within two years I was on my way to Iraq. I had met my recruiter six years earlier by...
Fighting against the Odds: Black Soldiers in the Second World War
John H. Morrow, Jr. , is Franklin Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He taught for seventeen years at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where, in 1971, he became the first African American faculty member in the...
Fighting for Democracy in World War I—Overseas and Over Here
Maurice Jackson is Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism (2009), and the co-editor of...
Creating Opportunity: My Fight for Social Justice and Advice for Young Women Today
I never expected to be a leader. It’s hard to imagine now, but I grew up during a time when there were few opportunities for women in the workplace, other than being a man’s secretary. Unlike most of my peers, I was extremely...
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Her Hat Was in the Ring: How Thousands of Women Were Elected to Political Office before 1920
In 1866, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the well-known leader of the woman’s rights movement, declared her intention to run for Congress, from Brooklyn, New York. Stanton was probably the first woman to campaign for a federal office. It...
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How Women Legislate
An enduring question about women in politics is whether they operate differently from men. If so, do these differences affect government policies and procedures, especially those that flow from local, state, and national legislatures?...
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Women and the United States Supreme Court
If you ask most people about the history of women and the United States Supreme Court, they are likely to point to the historic nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female justice, in 1981. That is a watershed moment in our...
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Women’s Leadership in the American Revolution
What did it mean for women to exercise "leadership" in the American Revolution? Before that conflict, the question itself would probably have baffled most American women and men. Living within a staunchly patriarchal society, they...
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Clarksdale: Myth, Music, and Mercy in the Mississippi Delta
While the term the blues means many different things to many different people, it’s undeniable that everyone gets them at one point or another. As the late vocalist Johnny Taylor sang, "People got money, still got problems/ Go to the...
Robert Johnson and the Rise of the Blues
In November of 1936, a young man named Robert Johnson traveled from Mississippi to San Antonio, Texas, for his first recording session with the American Record Corporation. He was twenty-five years old and had already hoboed and...
Songs of a Different South: The Allman Brothers’ Blues-Rock Legacy
In March 1971, the Allman Brothers Band—Duane Allman (guitar), Gregg Allman (vocals, organ), Jai Johanny "Jaimoe" Johnson (drums), Butch Trucks (drums), Dickey Betts (guitar), and Berry Oakley (bass)—took the stage at the Fillmore...
Charles Mingus and the Third Stream
Among the many jazz movements in which Charles Mingus (1922–1979) participated, the most likely and the most unlikely was Third Stream Music. [1] Gunther Schuller (1925–2015) coined the term, describing Third Stream as "the fusion and...
From the Editor
History Now welcomes you back to the classroom for another exciting semester engaging the American past. We begin this school year with an issue on early American religion that highlights one of the critical characteristics of our...
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From the Editor
To celebrate the launch of Gilder Lehrman’s new website, we at History Now thought it appropriate to provide readers with a special, expanded issue. We chose for our topic one of the central themes in our national history: the causes...
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Welcome to the Inaugural Issue of History Now
The Gilder Lehrman Institute’s quarterly American history online journal. The journal’s primary mission: to promote the study of American history with articles from noted historians as well as lesson plans, resource guides, links to...
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Welcome To The Second Issue of History Now
Students often ask: How do historians know what happened in the past? How do they know what Frederick Douglass said about slavery, what Abigail Adams thought about American independence, or what happened at Sutter’s mill? As scholars...
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Welcome to the Third Issue of History Now
It is a cliché that America is a land of immigrants. But there is truth behind this cliché. From the migrating hunters who crossed the Bering Strait thousands of years ago to the Mayflower’s English passengers of 1620 to the Ukrainian...
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Welcome to the Fourth Issue of History Now
National holidays often conjure up images of family gatherings, picnics and barbeques, jubilant children celebrating a day off from school, and newspaper advertisements of department store sales. Yet as historians and history teachers...
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From The Editor
Abolition, temperance, women's rights, utopian experiments, religious revivalism, prison, asylum, and even diet reform: Readers of this list know right away that they have been transported to the 1830s and '40s, America's first great ...
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From The Editor
Welcome to the sixth issue of HISTORY NOW. I am pleased to announce that HISTORY NOW was recently selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities for inclusion on EDSITEment ( http://edsitement.neh.gov ) as one of the best...
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From the Editor
In this issue, HISTORY NOW looks at the efforts by women across two centuries to gain the right to vote and to enjoy equal opportunities within American society. The women’s rights movement, like the struggle by African Americans to...
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From The Editor
As the editor of History Now, let me welcome you back to another year in the classroom. What better way to start the year than with an issue on The American West? Of course, for many students, mention of "The West" conjures up popular...
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From The Editor
Computers, iPods, cell phones, Blackberries . . . Radio, movies, television, videos . . . cars, planes, space shuttles . . . washing machines, dish washers, robotic vacuum cleaners . . . laser surgery, heart transplants, artificial...
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From The Editor
Urbanization is a major theme in modern American history and it is intimately connected to such events as the revolutions in transportation and manufacturing and the expansion of our borders to the Pacific Ocean and the Rio Grande. In...
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From The Editor
As school children, my generation thrilled to the stories of European explorers who set out in small wooden ships to cross uncharted seas. These men represented the curiosity, imagination, and desire for new experiences, exotic goods...
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From The Editor
When delegates from twelve states gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, many of them feared that the quarrels between the states, the sudden rash of internal rebellions, the continuing presence of enemies on our national...
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From The Editor
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into the global conflict known as World War II. The impact of this war was felt by civilians as well as soldiers, as the nation transformed itself...
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From The Editor
Like the other branches of the national government, the court system has evolved over the course our history. The structure of the court was not fully defined in the Constitution. The first effort to organize the court and clarify its...
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From The Editor
Every teacher knows that a novel can sometimes convey the mood and spirit of a historical era or event more powerfully than a textbook. And every teacher also knows that some novels have even made history. These are books that every...
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From The Editor
The name Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt conjures up many images: from hunter to teddy bear, from trust-buster to champion of capitalism, from Republican president to Bull Moose challenger. T.R. remains controversial, contradictory, and...
From The Editor
Abraham Lincoln is surely the most revered and admired president in our national history. As we look forward to the bicentennial of President Lincoln’s birthday in 2009, History Now is fortunate to have four leading Lincoln scholars...
From The Editor
As Americans anxiously watch the stock market’s daily fluctuations, the rising unemployment rate, housing foreclosures and the scandals that have rocked the financial world, the fear of another Great Depression hovers in our minds....
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From The Editor
Modern headlines often carry news of scandals, crimes, corruption, and violence. When historians study this darker side of life, they hope to use the events as windows on a particular era, shedding light on its cultural and religious...
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From the Editor
In 1763 Americans toasted their King and their Mother Country. Twenty years later, they celebrated their independence from both. The story of the birth of our nation is a fascinating one—complex, surprising, triumphant and tragic. It...
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From The Editor
In the decades immediately following the War of 1812, the face of America changed. Population grew and young Americans far outnumbered their parents. For many the West beckoned, and settlers poured into the region west of the original...
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From The Editor
Americans love their sports. Many of us watch the year flow by, not from month to month, but from baseball to soccer to basketball to football season—until spring training rolls around and the cycle begins once more. Over our morning...
From The Editor
In recent months, our newspapers, cable shows, blogs and even You Tube have been filled with articles and commentary on the American economy. From optimistic reassurances that American capitalism and its institutions are basically...
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From the Editor
Teachers responsible for a class in early American history often find themselves asking: When does American history begin? What does "America" include? Is this a story only of the English colonies, or is it the story of the settlement...
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From the Editor
In this final issue of 2010, History Now offers readers a selection of the latest interpretations of the Civil War era by four leading historians. These essays remind us that this critical moment in the history of our nation continues...
From The Editor
Many of us who grew up in the decades of the Cold War have memories of participating in air raid drills in school, watching Joseph McCarthy and his anti-communist hearings on the grainy black and white of our televisions, waiting...
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From the Editor
Everything that American children of my generation knew—or thought they knew—about Indians, or Native Americans, came from Saturday afternoon cowboy and Indian movies. We knew that they talked funny; they all lived in teepees; they...
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From The Editor
The desire to reform and even to perfect society is as American as apple pie. From the Puritans’ determination to create "a city upon a hill," to the utopian communities of the early nineteenth century, to the communes created by...
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From The Editor
The struggle for equality is one of the defining themes of American history. In recent issues of HISTORY NOW scholars and teachers have charted the movements to end slavery, to insure women’s suffrage, and to provide opportunities for...
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From the Editor
Popular music is the soundtrack to much of our history. When Revolutionary War soldiers went off to war, they did so to the tune of "Yankee Doodle." Abolitionist songs, sung by groups like the Hutchinson Family Singers, brought the...
From the Editor
Once again, presidential politics is in the air—and on the television. And on the radio. And on the web, on billboards, and bumper stickers. In a presidential election year, it seems as if our nation’s full attention is focused on the...
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From the Editor
"The happiness of America is intimately tied to the happiness of all humanity," the young Marquis de Lafayette wrote in 1777. His comment suggests the immediate and the long-range impact of a revolution that was one of the first...
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From the Editor
The Constitution does not spell out the duties or define the powers of a president’s spouse, yet America’s "first ladies" have, from the beginning of our nation, played key roles as public figures. They have set precedents,...
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