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American Studies

W. E. B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts in 1868. He died ninety-five years later in Accra, Ghana in 1963. During his long life he rose rapidly to become and remain a powerful...

The literature of Early America is a window which gives us a view into major events and everyday minutiae of the time that helped shape the United States into what it is today. In its earliest stages...

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” As You Like It by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s influence over theater and literature far exceeded the borders of Europe and...

A recent journey into the Readex archives reveals just how much clothing and fashion informed social, political, religious, and health opinions and commentaries in the 19th and early 20th centuries...

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education and declared state laws establishing “separate but equal” public schooling to be unconstitutional...

Booker Taliaferro Washington was born April 5, 1856 in Virginia the son of an enslaved woman named Jane who later, after emancipation, was able to reunite with her husband, Washington Ferguson, in...

The search for inoculation from the most dreadful diseases that afflict humankind has been relentless for centuries. The history of the American colonies was affected by the decision of George...

The 1880s saw the modern bicycle, with a diamond frame, pneumatic tires, and a chain-driven rear wheel, take shape. Along with their similarly sized wheels, these features made the new machine safer...

Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee opened on January 9, 1866 more than year before Howard University. While Howard was beset by controversy from its beginning, Fisk seems to have had a...

As U.S. settlers pushed farther west, Native Americans were confined to increasingly small parcels of land which restricted their autonomy, impacted their cultures and traditions, and led to numerous...

March 1865 Liverpool, England. It stood in the center of the stage, at least six feet tall, perched on two-foot-tall supports, with a decorative crown of wood carved vines and fleur-de-lis. To...

“This institution bids fair to do great good.” — New York Evening Post (1867) Historically Black Colleges and Universities, commonly referred to as HBCUs, have graduated tens of thousands of men and...

General Ulysses S. Grant’s wife, Julia Dent Grant, enjoyed sharing the following anecdote about their epic voyage around the world. Her story emphasized a key difference between her husband and his...

In January 1840, 31-year-old Albert Pike published a poem entitled “Dissolution of the Union.” With the arrival of the American Civil War, the poem’s prophecy was proven true; its Boston-born author...

Like many bank robbers, Cassie Chadwick proffered a note to her victims. Early in her criminal career, when she was just 22 years old, that elegant, imaginative note simply stated that because she was...

In this issue: The 19th-century flash press as an underrated repository of

The Methodist Episcopal Church was the first and largest denomination to establish the practice of organizing outdoor religious worship. It originated in the wild frontier of Kentucky and quickly...

Grace Halsell was a ghostwriter before she became a ghost. As a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson she was officially invisible; as an undercover journalist she later adopted a number of racial...

Early American Newspapers, Series 10, makes hundreds of essential titles from all 50 states searchable for the first time. Included are some of the earliest and rarest newspapers published in each...

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the adult education and social movement known as Chautauqua blossomed in the United States. The original Chautauqua was the concept of a Methodist...

The evocative quotation in the title comes from Dr. Benjamin Wilson, professor of history at Western Michigan University, who in 2002 wrote Black Eden: The Idlewild Community. “R and R from racism”...

Intrepid souls who ventured out into the blizzard in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 7, 1875 might have encountered a singular apparition: a procession of formally-dressed African-American men...

The word “club” has divergent associations: on the one hand it relates to a weapon, on the other to a group of like-minded individuals who gather regularly for a specific purpose. Following the...

As an enslaved man, Henry Brown’s experience was not atypical; he was allowed to marry and have children, but as human property he and his family could be permanently separated from each other on a...