480 items
The Underground Railroad was a metaphor. Yet many textbooks treat it as an official name for a secret network that once helped escaping slaves. The more literal-minded students end up questioning whether these fixed escape routes were...
The United States and China during the Cold War
The Cold War Comes to Asia In the closing years of World War II, American military and diplomatic representatives in China recognized that civil war was likely to erupt between the Nationalist-controlled government headed by Chiang...
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The War against Spain in the Philippines in 1898
Before learning of Commodore George Dewey’s destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, few Americans knew anything about the Philippine Islands. In her Pulitzer Prize–winning In the Days of McKinley ...
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Teaching American History to Muslim Exchange Students
Everyone knows that the election of 2004 marked a pivotal turning point for the American people. That point was brought home forcefully by the experience of teaching American history that summer to a group of twenty-one young Muslim...
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A Right Deferred: African American Voter Suppression after Reconstruction
In the United States, voting is a constitutionally protected right and an essential symbol of meaningful political participation in our nation’s electoral processes of governing. The right to vote and to have one’s vote count toward...
Technology in the Persian Gulf War of 1991
In August 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. Five short months later, a powerful coalition led by the United States would launch Operation Desert Storm, one of the most rapid, decisive, and bloodless victories of all time. In just...
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"People Get Ready": Music and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s
Few sights or sounds conjure up the passion and purposefulness of the Southern Civil Rights Movement as powerfully as the freedom songs that provided a stirring musical accompaniment to the campaign for racial justice and equality in...
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African American Women and the Nineteenth Amendment
Sharon Harley is Associate Professor and former Chair of the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She and historian Rosalyn Terborg-Penn co-edited the pioneer anthology The Afro-American...
American Sabor: A Guided Playlist of Latino Music
The word sabor in Spanish evokes the delights of music, as well as food. It signifies a rich essence that makes our mouths water, or makes our bodies want to move. In this article we highlight a few songs by Latinos and Latinas that...
The Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre
The murder of more than 400 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and My Khe by US soldiers on March 16, 1968, stands as one of the darkest days in the nation’s military history. It left an indelible stain on America’s record in Vietnam, the...
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Frederick Douglass and the "Progress of American Liberty"
James Oliver Horton was the Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History at George Washington University and historian emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He edited,...
Patriotism Crosses the Color Line: African Americans in World War II
Although African Americans have been the victims of racial oppression throughout the history of the United States, they have always supported the nation, especially during wartime. When World War II erupted, over 2.5 million black men...
Ralph W. Kirkham: A Christian Soldier in the US-Mexican War
North of Mexico’s border, most Americans know the 1846 conflict that established that boundary (if they know it at all) as the training ground for Civil War heroes. Generals Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, and...
Iran and the United States in the Cold War
As the latest wave of revolutionary uncertainty sweeps across the Middle East, Iran remains one of the region’s biggest question marks. The Islamic regime that temporarily crushed the Green Movement after Iran’s controversial...
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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...
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The Forties and the Music of World War II
The 1940s were the apotheosis of American popular music. Swing, blues and country were all popular styles but, above all, it was the heyday of the seventeen-piece big band. Names like Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Duke...
Race and the American Constitution: A Struggle toward National Ideals
James O. Horton was the Benjamin Banneker Professor Emeritus of American Studies and History at George Washington University and historian emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He edited,...
The Colonial Virginia Frontier and International Native American Diplomacy
Telling the story of Native Americans and colonial Virginians is a complex challenge clouded by centuries of mythology. The history of early settlement is dominated by the story of a preteen Pocahontas saving the life of a courageous...
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Suggested Resources on the War of 1812 from the Archivist
Prof. Taylor’s most recent book, the prizewinning The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Knopf, 2010), focuses on the conflict along the US-Canadian border involving...
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The Antifederalists: The Other Founders of the American Constitutional Tradition?
The Great Debate The publication of the Constitution in September 1787 inaugurated one of the most vigorous political campaigns in American history. In the process of arguing over the merits of the new plan of government, Americans...
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The First Saddest Day of My Life: A Vietnam War Story
What I know about the Vietnam War, I learned as a child from my father, Louis Raynor. At thirteen years old, I discovered an old, tattered, leather-bound diary in my parents’ chest of drawers. When I opened it, I immediately...
The William Shepp Diaries: Combat and Danger in World War I
"Disappointments," wrote Private William Shepp, "are common in the army." At the time, Shepp, an aspiring teacher from a small community in West Virginia, was pondering the seemingly unrewarding and unending work that he and the men...
The Rise of an American Institution: The Stock Market
On nearly every workday in the United States, if you watch cable news or browse an Internet news site at 9:30 in the morning and 4:00 in the afternoon (Eastern Time), you’ll probably see two utterly unremarkable events covered live....
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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...
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...
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