478 items
The emergence of the independent republic of Liberia on the coast of West Africa in the mid-nineteenth century was a historically significant turn of events in several ways. Led by a Black American settler class that sought to rule...
The Will to Be Free: On the Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote that “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” [1] His letter addressed his fellow clergymen amidst the...
Insurgent India: Purna Swaraj as Self-Determination
“At the stroke of midnight, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.” These are the famous words of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, that began his resonant “Tryst with Destiny” speech of August...
From the Editor
It is unlikely that Thomas Jefferson imagined the principles and ideals he laid down in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence would reverberate throughout the world for centuries to come. Yet, from Liberia to India, from New...
The Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe)
The Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) was the most polarizing event in the colonial history of Zimbabwe. Locally, regionally, and internationally, it sharpened differences of opinion with respect to independence, especially...
From the Editor
It is surprising to realize that the Hispanic legacy in American history is a story rarely told in our classrooms. In this issue of History Now , we hope to provide our readers with a broad sampling of the rich and varied stories of...
Inventing a Past: Molly Brant’s Life in Leadership
How do you write the history of someone for whom no image exists? Who surfaces intermittently in scraps of words found across hundreds of pages of archival documents? Whose singularity is so often glossed and aggregated as “Indian”?...
Appears in:
Nancy Ward, Cherokee Beloved Woman
In 1755 a Cherokee woman named Nanye’hi accompanied a war party, which included her husband Kingfisher. At Taliwa in what today is north Georgia, the Cherokees engaged the enemy Creek Indians in battle. Nanye’hi crouched behind a log...
Appears in:
Ely S. Parker (Donehogawa): Civil War Hero, Ethnologist, Political Leader
After 1800, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, like most Native American tribes, faced a long struggle against destruction of their land bases, cultures, and livelihoods. These struggles also spawned revival movements, one of...
Appears in:
Sitting Bull: Last of the Great Chiefs
Sitting Bull was the last of the great Indian chiefs to surrender his free way of life and settle on a government reservation. He belonged to the Hunkpapa tribe of the Lakota Sioux. The Lakotas numbered seven tribes, loosely...
Appears in:
Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) and the National Council of American Indians: Leading the Way for Indigenous Self-Representation
Born on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in 1876, the same year as the Battle of Greasy Grass (known more commonly in US history as the Battle of Little Big Horn), Gertrude Simmons Bonnin grew up amidst a US-national culture of systemic...
Appears in:
"Show Them What an Indian Can Do": The Example of Jim Thorpe
Although the twentieth century produced many great athletes, there is no one who stood out more than Jim Thorpe. That is not just my opinion. When Jim Thorpe won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games, the king of Sweden said to...
Appears in:
From the Editor
To most Americans, the names of Squanto, Sacagawea, Geronimo, and Sitting Bull are relatively familiar—although how they are described usually depends on their relationship to the White culture of their day. Their individual histories...
Appears in:
Indigenous Americans in World War II: The Navajo Code Talkers
In the summer of 1983, my son and I visited my father, Benson Tohe. He and other Navajo Code Talkers had recently been honored in Washington, DC, with a parade and given a medal for their service in World War II. That was the first...
Appears in:
Yellow Fever 1793
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...
The Influenza of 1918 and the Coronavirus of 2020: Some Parallels and Differences
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...
Invisible Threats and the Politics of Disaster: Three Mile Island and Covid-19
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...
History in the Making: COVIDCalls and the COVID-19 Pandemic
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....
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
Paragraphs
The Importance of Studying Disasters: Ideas and Advice for the Classroom
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...
From the Editor
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...
The Heart and Soul of Fannie Lou Hamer, An Extraordinary African American Leader
Fannie Lou Hamer was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, to Ella and James Lee Townsend (her sharecropping parents), who taught her to never quit in her endeavors-a creed she tried to live by her entire life. Of...
The Persistence of Ida B. Wells: Reform Leader and Civil Rights Activist
In an 1892 speech, Ida B. Wells told her audience, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” [1] She lived these words, determinedly and vocally confronting every social injustice she encountered. Wells (1862...
Showing results 51 - 75