451 items
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
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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...
Adella Hunt Logan: Suffragist and Educator
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...
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...
Ten Ways to Teach Rosa Parks
Adapted and reprinted with permission from The Nation [Issue of December 1, 2015] On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus and was arrested. Her courageous action galvanized a yearlong community...
From the Editor
When the newly elected female members of Congress posed for their pictures in 2018, most chose to stand in front of the portrait of Shirley Chisholm. Chisholm, who served from 1969 to 1983, was not only the first African American...
Juan Felipe Herrera: Poet Laureate and Pioneer of Chicano Literature
Juan Felipe Herrera, born to migrant parents Felipe Emilio Herrera and Lucha Andrea Quintana in Fowler, California, on December 27, 1948, is a writer unique for his unrelenting spirit of innovation. He boldly expands the boundaries of...
El enemigo de mi enemigo es mi amigo: Bernardo de Gálvez and the Battle That Saved the United States at Its Birth
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” goes the old adage, which is particularly apt when describing the relationship between Spain and the nascent United States during the War of American Independence. By 1775 when the war began,...
Antonia Pantoja, a Nuyorican Builder of Institutions
Antonia Pantoja was a fierce community organizer and builder of influential institutions. Throughout her life she created organizations that enhanced the lives of Puerto Ricans and other minoritized communities. She was a dreamer with...
Voices of Democracy: Jovita Idár, the Idár Family, and the Struggle against Juan Crow
In August 2023, the US Mint will release the Jovita Idár quarter, “the ninth coin in the American Women Quarters Program” authorized by Public Law 116–330. On its website, the Mint states that Idár’s “ideas and practices were ahead of...
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg: Archivist, Institution Builder, and Advocate of Global Black History
“The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.” So begins one of the most well-known essays of the Harlem Renaissance, “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” written by Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. Published in the March...
From the Editor
In this issue of History Now , we continue our mission of ensuring that the stories of Americans of all races and ethnicities appear in our national history. “Hispanic Heroes in American History” introduces readers to the...
"All Should Have an Equal Chance": Abraham Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence
In many ways, the Gettysburg Address reflects the culmination of Abraham Lincoln’s lifelong admiration for the principles of the Declaration of Independence. As a young man in 1838, Lincoln responded to the wave of mob violence...
Abraham Lincoln's "Apple of Gold": The Declaration of Independence
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” [1] So Abraham Lincoln began the most famous speech of...
"Revered By All": The Declaration of Independence in the Reconstruction Era
Although it was the speech that redefined the conflict and effectively changed the meaning of the Constitution, Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address is often misunderstood today when it is not simply ignored, at least in American...
The Declaration of Independence as Mission Statement in the Age of Lincoln
At Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln made the Declaration of Independence the moment of creation for the American republic from which all else had proceeded. In some mystical sense, the nation had been “conceived” in liberty and...
Self-Evident Truths: Black Americans and the Declaration of Independence
In 1776, as the ink on the Declaration of Independence dried, the Rev. Lemuel Haynes pointed out that Black Americans like himself lived under “much greater oppression than that which Englishmen seem so much to spurn at. I mean an...
From the Editor
The Declaration of Independence continues to be a central focus of attention both in our historical literature and in the defining of our national identity. In this issue of History Now , five distinguished scholars examine the impact...
Diego de Gardoqui and the Beginnings of Spanish-American Diplomacy
Born into a prominent Basque family on November 12, 1735, in the province of Vizcaya, Spain, Diego de Gardoqui was a treasured son of Don José Ignacio Gardoqui y Azpegorta and his wife Maria Simona. Groomed to be a banker, he was sent...
Benjamin Franklin, Spain, and the Independence of the United States
On November 29, 1775, more than six months before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Congress’s Secret Committee of Correspondence gave instructions to Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane, and Arthur Lee to travel to Paris to...
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