73 items
" We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ." Declaration of...
Inside the Vault: Twentieth-Century Voting Rights
On August 3, 2023, our curators were joined by Dr. Barbara Perry, Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, to discuss materials related to twentieth-century...
Inside the Vault: Mary Katherine Goddard
On March 3, 2022, our curators were joined by Dr. Martha J. King to discuss Mary Katherine Goddard. Goddard was a newspaper publisher and printer, producing one of the first copies of the Declaration of Independence, and served as...
Inside The Vault: Eleanor Roosevelt, “Four Basic Rights,” and Desegregation
Originally broadcast on August 21, 2020, this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection explores a 1944 letter by Eleanor Roosevelt defending the four basic rights of all Americans and desegregation...
"Contagious Liberty": Women in the Revolutionary Age
Background The American Revolution, a byproduct of events both on the North American continent and abroad, unleashed a movement that focused on egalitarianism in ways that had never been seen before. Even John Adams commented on these...
Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady for Social Justice: A Common Core Unit (Grades 9–12)
Objectives Students will be asked to read and analyze primary and secondary sources about Eleanor Roosevelt and the work she did to support social justice issues both in the United States and around the world. They will look at the...
Inside the Vault: Women's Suffrage
In this session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection , originally broadcast on October 15, 2020, our curators are joined by CherylAnne Amendola, 2017 New Jersey History Teacher of the Year, and Lauren...
Inside the Vault: America’s First First Lady: Martha Washington
In this session, Victoria Ann Scovens from Hamilton and Rosanne Lichatin, 2005 National History Teacher of the Year, join our curators to discuss two letters written by America’s first First Lady, Martha Washington. Written during...
Inside the Vault: The Lives and Works of Phillis Wheatley and Elizabeth Keckley
On the February 4, 2021 session of Inside the Vault: Highlights from the Gilder Lehrman Collection , our curators talk with English Language Arts educator Jeanette Providence and Hamilton cast member Krystal Mackie about the lives...
Inside the Vault: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Voting Rights
On May 4, 2023, our curators were joined by Dr. Andrew Robertson (The Graduate Center and Lehman College, CUNY) to discuss materials related to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century voting rights. Dr. Robertson explained how voting...
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945
David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. Freedom from Fear focuses primarily on political and economic developments, recounting how presidents and citizens responded to the two great...
Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920
Glenda Gilmore is Assistant Professor of American History at Yale University. Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920 records political and social change in North Carolina from the...
Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom
Catherine Clinton, professor of US history at Queen’s University Belfast, has wrtten or edited more than twenty historical books for both children and adults, including The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South and I,...
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Joseph J. Ellis, Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, discusses his Pulitzer Prize–winning book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, explains the emergence of the men who led the Revolutionary War and created...
The Age of Homespun: Family Labor in the Colonial Economy
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is James Duncan Professor of History and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Professor Ulrich won the Pulitzer Prize for her first book, A Midwife’s Tale...
In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
Mary Beth Norton, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History at Cornell University, examines the Salem witchcraft crisis from a seventeenth-century perspective, drawing not only on court records, but also on correspondence and...
The Post-Revolutionary Generation
Joyce Appleby, Professor Emerita, University of California, Los Angeles, explores how the men and women born after the American Revolution experienced and developed the theoretical ideas of liberty and independence put in place by...
Chat with the Curator: Amelia Earhart and Neta Snook
Curator of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, Sandra Trenholm, describes documents in the Neta Snook Collection, including letters and photographs of Amelia Earhart. Biographer Susan Butler (East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart)...
"Harlem's Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills"
Born to parents who were both former slaves, Florence Mills knew at an early age that she loved to sing and that her sweet, bird-like voice, resonated with those who heard her. Performing catapulted her all the way to the stages of...
"The Bell Rang"
A young enslaved girl witnesses the heartbreak and hopefulness of her family and their plantation community when her brother escapes for freedom in this brilliantly conceived picture book by Coretta Scott King Award–winner James E....
"Ona Judge Outwits the Washingtons"
Soon after American colonists had won independence from Great Britain, Ona Judge was fighting for her own freedom from one of America’s most famous founding fathers, George Washington. George and Martha Washington valued Ona as one...
"Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreno Played the Piano for President Lincoln"
As a little girl, Teresa Carreño loved to let her hands dance across the beautiful keys of the piano. If she felt sad, music cheered her up, and when she was happy, the piano helped her share that joy. Soon she was writing her own...
"Gittel's Journey: An Ellis Island Story"
Gittel and her mother were supposed to immigrate to America together, but when her mother is stopped by the health inspector, Gittel must make the journey alone. Her mother writes her cousin’s address in New York on a piece of paper....
"A Ride to Remember: A Civil Rights Story"
A Ride to Remember tells how a community came together—both Black and White—to make a change. When Sharon Langley was born in the early 1960s, many amusement parks were segregated, and African American families were not allowed entry...
"Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks"
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) is known for her poems about “real life.” She wrote about love, loneliness, family, and poverty—showing readers how just about anything could become a beautiful poem. Exquisite follows Gwendolyn from...
"The Voice That Won the Vote: How One Woman's Words Made History"
In August of 1920, women’s suffrage in America came down to the vote in Tennessee. If the Tennessee legislature approved the Nineteenth Amendment it would be ratified, giving American women the right to vote. The historic moment came...
"Martin & Anne: The Kindred Spirits of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Anne Frank"
Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. were born the same year a world apart. Both faced ugly prejudices and violence, which both answered with words of love and faith in humanity. This is the story of their parallel journeys to find...
"Eliza: The Story of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton"
This is a beautiful and informative biography featuring extensive back matter–including information about America’s revolution, the historical relevance of letter writing, and a timeline–and exquisite, thoroughly researched art that...
"Before She Was Harriet"
This lush, lyrical biography in verse begins with a glimpse of Harriet Tubman as an old woman, and travels back in time through the many roles she played through her life: spy, liberator, suffragist, and more. Illustrated by James...
"The Storyteller's Candle / La velita de los cuentos"
This is the story of librarian Pura Belpré, told through the eyes of two young children who are introduced to the library and its treasures just before Christmas. Lulu Delacre's lovely illustrations evoke New York City at the time of...
Inside the Vault: Lucy Knox
During the siege of Boston in 1775, 19-year-old Lucy Knox gave up everything she knew and left Boston with her husband’s sword hidden in her clothes. She would never see her parents or siblings again. Lucy’s letters to her husband,...
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life
Lori D. Ginzberg, professor of history and women’s studies at Pennsylvania State University, discusses her 2010 biography, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life.
The Story of America: Essays on Origins
Historian Jill Lepore (David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard and a staff writer at the New Yorker ) discusses her 2012 book, The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton University Press).
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Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin
Historian Jill Lepore of Harvard University discusses her book, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award, with James G. Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute.
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