Posts related to

American Studies

Founded in 1866, Fisk University is a private university in Nashville, Tennessee, with a long-standing reputation for academic excellence. Fisk is currently ranked #6 among historically black...

Before the American Revolution, postal service, such as it was, was administered by the British. Mail within the colonies was sparse, while the preponderance of mail was between North America and...

In this issue: Big Brother's surveillance of an African-American activist; a ballyhooed British soccer club drops the proverbial ball; and formidable Black female voices in 19th-century media...

It does seem a little like murder to pick off a man as one would a deer, but sharp-shooting in war is one of the “necessities.” The “Near Yorktown” correspondent of the New York Post relates the...

Blame it on a literal reading of the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, 1834, the New Hampshire state legislature granted a charter to found Noyes Academy in the rural Town of Canaan. Because the...

Between early August and early November of 1793 almost ten percent of the population of Philadelphia died after contracting Yellow Fever. At that time Philadelphia was the capital of the young nation...

In 1895 at least one death was ascribed to a work of fiction. Its overwhelming influence was described in viral terms before viruses were well understood as biological let alone social phenomena. That...

L’Auto Bolide is the very latest, the most startling thing in the world of loop-the-loop. It is an achievement formidable, thrilling, marvellous—the sort of thing that makes the beholder stop...

In January 1919 the influenza pandemic continued to sweep through the United States seemingly unabated. On New Year’s Day the Augusta Chronicle published the advertisement for a preventative tonic...

The earliest American sermons were largely delivered by the most erudite men in the Protestant colonies. These eminent divines were concentrated in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where their influence...

In early 1919 San Francisco was on the brink of a third wave of influenza. On January 10 of that year the San Jose Mercury Herald reported on the increasing number of deaths under the headline, “Masks...

The advent of motion picture industry at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was explosive. The American public was besotted by the astonishing and cheap new entertainment. From the earliest days...

The history of enlightened treatment of the mentally ill in the United States was significantly affected by Dr. Benjamin Rush, the famed Philadelphia physician and signer of the Declaration of...

An updated version of this blog post (September 2024) is now available. For ten years or more, faculty and students have been asking Readex to “bring history to life” in new ways. “You have tremendous...

Last night one of the most magnificent atmospheric exhibitions that have ever been witnessed in this latitude took place. A display of the aurora borealis of surpassing extent and beauty occupied the...

You’re traveling to another dimension, north of Rutland, Vermont, to a place not only of sight and sound but of mind, on a journey to what was the epicenter of paranormal activity in 1870s America...

There is a peculiar religious sect in Paris and they worship absinthe. Their shrines are the boulevard cafes; their prayer books the muddy green liquid that cages mental rats within their brains and...

As seen in Part 2 of this series, U.S. newspaper coverage of the Spanish Influenza ended 1918 on a relatively positive note. On New Year’ Eve the San Jose Mercury News reported: The conditions for San...

During the Second Industrial Revolution, Americans were introduced to an array of life-changing products—from the automobile to the lightbulb to the telephone. But 19th-century inventors also designed...

In this issue: Turn-of-the-century black intellectuals challenge a dark pseudo-science; the contentious politics of antislavery in early 20th-century newspapers; and the flash press reveals ordinary...

While the Boston area reeled under the burden of the epidemic, the influenza outbreak was spreading rapidly. On the same date, October 21, 1918, the Belleville News Democrat called the Illinois city...

In the late 19th century women began participating in the bicycle craze which men had enjoyed for two decades. This craze did not last long, but for women it was exciting and liberating. It was mostly...

The Spanish Flu, which swept the globe for more than two years and killed as many as 100,000,000, was misnamed. The origins of the 1918 pandemic have been debated, but it is generally accepted that...

Amy Murrell Taylor is an award-winning professor in the Department of History at the University of Kentucky, and author of the highly praised Embattled Freedom: Journeys Through the Civil War’s...