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America's Historical Newspapers

Henry Brown was born into slavery, circa 1815, 45 miles outside of Richmond, Virginia. As a young man, he was taken to work in the Richmond tobacco factory of his owner, William Barret. Well-regarded...

One of the most significant pieces of African American literature, “Native Son,” was serialized in the Kansas Plaindealer, Arkansas Free Press and other African American newspapers in 1941-42. These...

Poe sold his poem, “The Raven,” to The American Review and it appeared in its February 1845 issue under the pseudonym "Quarles." The poem's first publication with Poe's name was in the New York...

War of the Dictionaries By Barbara Shaffer, unofficial historian of Springfield, Massachusetts The Georgian brick building of the Merriam-Webster company on Federal Street in Springfield...

In Writing with Scissors: American Scrapbooks from the Civil War to the Harlem Renaissance, Ellen Gruber Garvey, Ph.D. (Professor, English Department, New Jersey City University) includes a section on...

“Report of a committee of the Linnæan Society of New England relative to a large marine animal, supposed to be a serpent, seen near Cape Ann, Massachusetts, in August, 1817.” From Early American...

Having successfully located and digitized almost all of the American newspapers published during the 17th and 18th centuries, Readex is now focusing on 19th and 20th century newspapers. Guided by our...

From the Readex digital edition Following the recent news that Readex is now offering institutions access to the complete historical run of the Washington Evening Star, here are comments from two...

Newspaper Archives for Academic Research and Training: A Series of Three Regionally Focused Webinars American newspapers—with their eyewitness reporting, editorials, advertisements, obituaries and...

Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling book and film, The Help, brought to life a familiar caricature of African American women, the American “mammy.” Depicted as good humored, overweight, middle-aged...

August 23, 2012, would have been Gene Kelly’s 100th birthday. While that would be reason enough to browse America's Historical Newspapers for coverage of his life and work, 2012 is also the 60th...

Eva Braun (1912-1945) In his recent review of Heike Görtemaker’s new book Eva Braun: Life with Hitler (New York Review of Books, Vol. 59, No. 7, Apr. 26, 2012), British historian Antony Beevor writes...

Isadora Duncan was dance-struck as a young child in San Francisco. By the time she was six, she was teaching neighborhood children how to move like ocean waves. The strict rules of ballet and...

What activities might make up the archetypal life of a 19th-century American man? Items on such a checklist could include: Samuel Clemens checked off many of these items: He was a sailor, if on the...

May 27, 2012, is the 75th anniversary of the opening celebrations of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. When it opened, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. It spanned the mile-wide...

“It was downright indecent. I saw women go out after the creatures had begun what they call their dance. I did not stay it through. I just couldn’t.” (1) (A woman’s indignant account of her visit to...

No novelist would dare to picture such an array of beautiful climatic conditions—the rosy dawn, the morning star, the moon on the horizon, the sea stretching in level beauty to the skyline—and on this...

Thousands of ships over centuries have lined the ocean floor, but even 100 years after it sank, the Titanic still fascinates. James Cameron’s 1997 critically acclaimed "Titanic"—the second bestselling...

Dr. James McCune Smith. Source: New-York Historical Society In 2010 descendents of Dr. James McCune Smith, a prominent abolitionist leader and prolific author, discovered and dedicated his unmarked...

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth. America’s Historical Newspapers contains hundreds of contemporaneous articles about this genius of English literature, as well as...

Our Guest Blogger: Barbara Shaffer, unofficial historian of Springfield, Massachusetts From the online archive of the Springfield Republican and Union Memories take many forms: stories of an older...

The Evening Star Newspaper Buildings. Source: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division On December 16, 1852, a newspaper described by historian Fred A. Emery as “The Rock of Gibraltar in...

LINOTYPE: THE FILM, a new documentary by Doug Wilson, is now being screened across the U.S. The word Etaoin, which looks a bit like a strange name, appears many times in 19th and 20th century...

Old Evening Star Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. -- Source: Carol M. Highsmith Archive (Library of Congress) This spring Readex will begin releasing a complete 70-year span of The...