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Historical Newspapers

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”...

Consider the groundhog, how its reputation precedes it. It neither sows nor reaps (over the winter), yet learned editors and numerous others laud this rodent’s “vaticinations” upon its annual February...

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...

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...

Less than three months after President John Adams signed the Sedition Act into law on July 14, 1798, Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon was accused of violating it. On July 31, 1798, Lyon published a...

Ice is a remarkable substance, solid yet transparent, alternately useful and vexatious in cold climates, marvelous in tropical ones, made of water yet it floats. The arrival of ice in Calcutta, India...

Why include primary sources in undergraduate course materials? Even prior to the pandemic, faculty were facing increased pressure from both students and administrators to revisit the use of a formal...

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...

In 1890 the Paiute shaman Wovoka gained a reputation among Western tribes as a visionary and teacher. Central to his teaching was the Ghost Dance which, properly practiced, would halt the expansion of...

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...

That there were witches in the olden times is true, else the Bible fights against shadows: for it tells us not once but many times that there were witches. According to printed sources dating to the...

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on the account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by...

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...

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...