Did you have a good National Handwriting Day? What? You didn’t know that penmanship-appreciators across the nation celebrate January 23 as National Handwriting Day? The rising popularity of typewriters and word processors in the 20th century, and today’s culture of quippy texts and tweets have led many to mourn the decline of penmanship. The Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA) instated this little-known holiday in 1977 in the hopes of combating handwriting malaise.
WIMA chose January 23 in honor of the Founding Father with the most iconic—and sizeable—signature, John Hancock.
Read about photography in the 19th century, explore select images from the American Civil War, and create your own Civil War-era portrait.
Are you teaching the Progressive Era this spring? Use the infographic below to provide your students an overview of the reform movements that make the Progressive Era stand out as a time of massive social, political, and economic change.
To view "Progressive Era Reform Movements" in History by Era, click here. To print the infographic as a PDF, click here.
As part of a Google Cultural Institute initiative on African American history, the Gilder Lehrman Institute created six digital exhibits featuring Gilder Lehrman’s rich materials relating to African American history. In celebration of Black History Month, we will be sharing these exhibits throughout the month. In honor of yesterday’s Google Doodle, here’s our Frederick Douglass from Slavery to Freedom digital exhibit.
Read a letter from Douglass to his former owner and his views on Jim Crow.
Despite unfair compensation, segregation, and even legal bars on military service, African Americans have served in every conflict in United States history. Take a peek at the next digital exhibition in Gilder Lehrman’s Black History Month initiative, created through a partnership with the Google Cultural Institute. (Click here to launch the interactive feature in a new window.)
You can see more essays, videos, online exhibitions, and primary sources on African American history.
We are thrilled to contribute to today’s Google Doodle honoring Frederick Douglass. Today is the first day of Black History Month, and the approximate date of Frederick Douglass’s 198th birthday.
Gilder Lehrman contributed to today’s Frederick Douglass Doodle in two ways. On the Google homepage, click "Explore the life and work of Frederick Douglass" to be routed to the Google Cultural Institute’s Black History and Culture series. Our Frederick Douglass from Slavery to Freedom exhibit is today’s featured exhibit. As part of a Google Cultural Institute initiative on African American history,
Ada Ferrer, professor of history and Latin American and Caribbean studies at New York University, was awarded the Frederick Douglass Book Prize Thursday night in a ceremony at the Yale Club in New York City. The award, which recognizes Ferrer’s book Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, was presented by David Blight, director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
Gilder Lehrman supporters, historians, students, and teachers came to honor Ms. Ferrer, whose winning book discusses the relationship between Cuba and Haiti during
The movement to end slavery has existed in various forms throughout American history, but the abolitionist movement slowly gained ground as a political force in our country through the mid-nineteenth century. Take a peek at the next digital exhibition in Gilder Lehrman’s Black History Month initiative, created through a partnership with the Google Cultural Institute. Click here to launch the interactive feature in a new window.
Explore more essays, videos, online exhibitions, and primary sources on African American history.
Written by Stephanie Townrow and Mary Kate Kwasnik.
William Woodlin enlisted in the United States Colored Infantry 8th Regiment in October 1863. Remarkably, Woodlin kept a journal during his service with the US Colored Troops. Woodlin’s brief entries describe camp life, his service with the regimental band as a horn player, several battles, the weather, equal pay with white soldiers, and the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment, among many other topics.
In October 1864, Woodlin describes the bravery of black troops in the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, reporting that "the johnnies made furious
Read the full transcript of the letter Lincoln wrote Mary Owens and view the Lincoln Speaks exhibition that explores the power of Lincoln's words.
Throughout American history, enslaved people have resisted bondage in a variety of ways: some escaped, rebelled, or sabotaged work tools or work product. They also resisted in more subtle ways, refusing privately to use names given to them by slave holders and maintaining their identity by keeping track of family members. Music, folk tales, and other African cultural forms also became weapons of resistance. Take a look at the next digital exhibition in Gilder Lehrman’s Black History Month initiative, created through a partnership with the Google Cultural Institute.
Click here to launch the
Looking for something interactive to use with your students? Check out Gilder Lehrman’s new Online Exhibitions page to see what resources we can offer your classroom. Our digital exhibitions range from the founding era to the twentieth century, and focus on key people, events, and themes in American history.
In a rare 1846 freedom suit, Dred and Harriet Scott sued their master for their own freedom as well as their daughters’. The resulting appeals and rulings that pushed the suit to the Supreme Court marked a turning point in the years leading up to the Civil War, calling into question issues of slavery, freedom, and states’ rights. Take a look at the next digital exhibition in Gilder Lehrman’s Black History Month initiative, created through a partnership with the Google Cultural Institute.
Click here to launch the interactive feature in a new window.
Today is the anniversary of the publication of the groundbreaking book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in 1963. Debunking the idea of the feminine mystique which glorified the role of women as homemakers as a myth, which has "succeeded in burying millions of women alive," Friedan challenged American women to seek fulfillment through education and work outside of the home. Friedan’s book quickly became a sensation and a catalyst for a second wave of the women’s rights movement. As a leader of the movement, Friedan was a key founder of NOW (National Organization for Women) in 1966, and
Read a transcript of the certificate and examine an African American’s pay warrant from the Revolutionary War.
Read the transcript of Henry Weeden’s note and read an essay about abolition and antebellum reform.
George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, in Virginia. To celebrate, enjoy a performance of "One Last Time" from the Broadway musical Hamilton, performed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Christopher Jackson, Sydney James Harcourt, and Ian Weinberger at the 2015 George Washington Prize dinner in New York City. Want more George Washington? Enter the Dear George Washington Essay Contest or read a letter Washington wrote about his reluctance to become president.
Between 1855 and 1886, Franklin E. McNear collected autographs in his leather-bound, red autograph book. Among the eighty-four signatures are notable historic figures like P.T. Barnum, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Douglass. Penned in 1860, the Frederick Douglass page includes more than just his autograph. Take a look at the image shown here to see the words Douglass wanted to accompany his autograph:
This then is my autograph and something more. I am for Liberty, the right of each man to own his own body and soul, whatever may be his colour wherever he may be born - whether of one race
The twentieth century was packed with socio-economic changes in American society. It is often difficult to understand just how different our country was at the beginning of the century. Use the infographic below as you are teaching the modern era to your classes to help students understand the extent of change in social structures during the twentieth century.
View this infographic, and download a printable PDF, on our website.
There are only six short weeks until the first student matinee of Hamilton on April 13!
To celebrate the launch of the program, we are excited to give you a series of posts that offer insight into the life of Alexander Hamilton. Every Wednesday until the first student matinee, look for an intriguing document, video, essay, or online exhibition that examines the Founding Father’s world.
First, explore the titular man behind the musical with the Gilder Lehrman exhibition "Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America." This digital exhibition includes documents and images that span
Looking to celebrate Women’s History Month by teaching women’s suffrage? Take a peek at our new infographic map and explore which states did (and did not) pass women’s suffrage before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920. Want to dig deeper? Read about the fight for suffrage in essays by Jonathan Soffer, and Barbara Winslow, or explore some of our women’s history Featured Primary Sources here.
View this infographic as a PDF.
On March 5, 1770, tensions in the American colonies culminated with an armed skirmish between British troops and American colonists in Boston. Although the American Revolution did not begin in earnest until five years later, the Boston Massacre is considered the spark that ignited revolutionary fervor in the colonies. Below is an interactive exploration of one of the treasures of the Gilder Lehrman Collection, Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, entitled "The Bloody Massacre in King-Street."
Take a closer look at the first draft of the US Constitution to see an example of the "long S" in print.
Many American presidents are remembered for the landmark laws, amendments, or executive acts they passed while in office. We remember President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking Congress to declare war on Japan in 1941. First Ladies like Nancy Reagan and Ellen Wilson are also remembered for leading passionate crusades against drugs and inadequate housing. Probably less remembered, however, are the children of presidents.
When President Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901, his eldest child Alice—often referred to by the press
There are now five weeks until the first student matinee of Hamilton!
This week, we’re continuing our blog series on Alexander Hamilton with Amtrak’s Arrive magazine—the March/April 2016 issue features a story on the student ticket program. In it, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of Hamilton, reflects on finding inspiration in musical theater when he was in school, his hopes for the student ticket program, and the smash-hit popularity of the show. Miranda discusses how Alexander Hamilton’s non-elite, immigrant background may make him more relatable to audiences, perhaps especially to
