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History Now Essay

Bridging the Caribbean: Puerto Rican Roots in Nineteenth-Century America

Virginia Sánchez Korrol

World History

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In recent years, the media has tended to portray US Latinos of Hispanic Caribbean ancestry as new immigrants, but this characterization ignores the long connections between these immigrants and the United States. And because Puerto...

Appears in:

3 | Immigration Spring 2005

History Now Essay

Cahokia: A Pre-Columbian American City

Timothy R. Pauketat

Almost a thousand years ago, American Indians built a city along the Mississippi River in the middle of North America. Located opposite modern-day St. Louis, Missouri, this city is called Cahokia by archaeologists, and it was as large...

Appears in:

28 | American Indians Summer 2011

History Now Essay

Change and Crisis: North America on the Eve of the European Invasion

Christopher L. Miller

Geography, Government and Civics, Religion and Philosophy

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

It was around the year 1450. A young man was living alone in the dense forest somewhere southeast of Lake Ontario because there was not enough food in his home village. Many like him were doing the same and some, perhaps even this...

Appears in:

25 | Three Worlds Meet Fall 2010

History Now Essay

Charles Mingus and the Third Stream

Krin Gabbard

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...

Appears in:

48 | Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity Summer 2017

History Now Essay

Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years

Charlotte Brooks

Economics, Government and Civics

In October 1950, the newly established People’s Republic of China entered the Korean War on the North Korean side against the United States and other United Nations troops. Many Chinese American citizens expressed deep concern at this...

Appears in:

42 | The Role of China in US History Spring 2015

History Now Essay

Citizenship in the Reconstruction South

Susanna Lee

Economics, Government and Civics

Slaveholders created a system of race, gender, and class inequality in the pre-Civil War South. They justified slavery by arguing that enslaved people could not take care of themselves and needed masters to look after them. White...

Appears in:

55 | Examining Reconstruction Fall 2019

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

Clarksdale: Myth, Music, and Mercy in the Mississippi Delta

Shelley Ritter

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...

Appears in:

48 | Jazz, the Blues, and American Identity Summer 2017

History Now Essay

Cold War, Warm Hearth

Elaine Tyler May

In the summer of 1959, a young couple married and spent their honeymoon in a fallout shelter. Life magazine featured the "sheltered honeymoon" with a photograph of the duo smiling on their lawn, surrounded by dozens of canned goods...

Appears in:

27 | The Cold War Spring 2011

History Now Essay

Coming to America: Ellis Island and New York City

Vincent J. Cannato

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

New York City is a kind of archipelago, a Philippines on the Hudson River. Only one borough—the Bronx—is actually attached to the American mainland. There are some forty islands in the city beyond Manhattan, Staten Island, and Long...

Appears in:

11 | American Cities Spring 2007

History Now Essay

Conflict and Commerce: The Rise and Fall of New Netherland

Simon Middleton

Economics, World History

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In September 1609, when Henry Hudson guided his ship, De Halve Maen, through the narrows dividing present-day Staten and Long Islands, he was not the first European navigator to sail into what we know today as New York Bay. The...

Appears in:

12 | The Age Of Exploration Summer 2007

History Now Essay

Constance Baker Motley: A Trailblazer in the Legal Profession

Gary L. Ford, Jr.

Government and Civics

Gary L. Ford Jr., an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College, City University of New York, is the author of Constance Baker Motley: One Woman’s Fight for Civil Rights and Equal Justice under Law (2017) and a co...

Appears in:

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Creating Opportunity: My Fight for Social Justice and Advice for Young Women Today

Harriet Karr-McDonald

Government and Civics

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...

Appears in:

47 | American Women in Leadership Winter 2017

History Now Essay

D-Day or Operation Overlord, June 6, 1944

Antony Beevor

World History

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

As dawn broke on June 6, 1944, the Allied invasion fleet became visible crossing the choppy waters of the English Channel to France. None of those who took part in D-Day, whether soldier, sailor, or airman, would ever forget the sight...

Appears in:

31 | Perspectives on America’s Wars Spring 2012

History Now Essay

Diego de Gardoqui and the Beginnings of Spanish-American Diplomacy

Elisa Vargas

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...

Appears in:

68 | The Role of Spain in the American Revolution Fall 2023

History Now Essay

Different Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement

Anthony J. Badger

Economics, Government and Civics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

In 1984 Jimmy Carter reflected on growing up in the segregated South. He recalled that as a young child, he, like many white children, had had an African American child as his closest friend. The two children spent all their play time...

Appears in:

8 | The Civil Rights Movement Summer 2006

History Now Essay

Disasters and the Politics of Memory

Kevin Rozario

Government and Civics

The controversy that erupted around the opening of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum on May 21, 2014, reminds us that much is at stake in the way disasters are remembered. Costing some $700 million to build, with an annual...

Appears in:

40 | Disasters in Modern American History Fall 2014

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

Dolley Madison: First Lady and Queen

Catherine Allgor

Government and Civics

Whatever else you can say about Dolley Payne Todd Madison (1768–1849), she was famous. She was so well known and well regarded in her lifetime that, at her death in 1849, both houses of Congress adjourned, along with the Supreme Court...

Appears in:

35 | America’s First Ladies Spring 2013

History Now Essay

Dora Dougherty Strother McKeown, Women Airforce Service Pilot in World War II

Katherine Sharp Landdeck

When Dora Dougherty Strother McKeown was just a kid she couldn’t wait for Sunday. For every Sunday her entire family would climb into their old Oakland motor car and drive to the airport to spend the day watching planes fly. It had...

Appears in:

70 | World War II: Portraits of Service Spring 2024

History Now Essay

Douglass and the US Constitution: The Dred Scott Decision

Randall Kennedy

Government and Civics

Randall Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on contracts, criminal law, and the regulation of race relations. He served as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall of the US...

Appears in:

57 | Black Voices in American Historiography Summer 2020

History Now Essay

Douglass the Autobiographer

Robert S. Levine

Literature

Frederick Douglass published three autobiographies during his lifetime— Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855), and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892)—as...

Appears in:

50 | Frederick Douglass at 200 Winter 2018

History Now Essay

Douglass, Lincoln, and the Civil War

Chandra Manning

“Here comes my friend Douglass,” exclaimed President Abraham Lincoln in the East Room of the White House after delivering his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865. As he grasped the hand of the distinguished abolitionist and...

Appears in:

50 | Frederick Douglass at 200 Winter 2018

History Now Essay

Early America’s Jewish Settlers

Eli Faber

Religion and Philosophy

If you had the opportunity to create a new society from scratch, to build its institutions and establish its social structure from the ground up, how would you go about doing it? This is one of the most fruitful ways for teachers and...

Appears in:

29 | Religion in the Colonial World Fall 2011

History Now Essay

Economic Policy through the Lens of History

Roger E. A. Farmer

Economics

9, 10, 11, 12, 13+

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be...

Appears in:

24 | Shaping the American Economy Summer 2010

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