This text highlights the growth of political activism that took place in Harlem during the Great Depression. Discriminatory hiring practices and widespread unemployment triggered job campaigns focused on increasing black employment in the largely…

Like many Allied propaganda images from the same period, this Nazi World War II poster focuses on the importance of the role played by civilians in the war effort. Workers in munitions factories and other war-production-related industries were viewed…

The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad is celebrated with a handshake, a bottle of champagne, and the laying of a golden railroad spike in Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10th, 1869. After years of speculation, government backing, corporate…

Christine Jorgensen, born George W. Jorgensen Jr., was an army clerical worker during World War II. After the war, she underwent sex reassignment surgery in Denmark. Jorgensen became well-known for this experience, and numerous media outlets…

This 1955 government pamphlet, issued by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, warns Americans about the dangers of radioactive fallout in the event of a nuclear explosion, and suggests measures citizens can take to protect themselves. With its…

Professor Greg Downs describes the pressures on family formation under slavery and the strategies that enslaved people employed to form and preserve families. He looks at what happened to families that broke up because of sale, westward migration,…

Uncovered during an archaeological dig of the former Five Points neighborhood, this teacup depicts the Irish temperance reformer Father Theobold Mathew, who during the late 1830s and 1840s convinced Irish on both sides of the Atlantic to embrace…

This newspaper article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, provided one of the few opportunities for a Filipino to address a U.S. audience about the Philippine Reservation exhibit at the 1904 World’s Fair. The article extensively quotes Vicente…

This African-American family was photographed in 1862 after Union forces captured the Sea Island coastal area of South Carolina. One of four photographs taken by Timothy O’Sullivan of the J. J. Smith plantation, this picture was subsequently…

This print, by an unknown illustrator, is based on an earlier oil painting by the artist George Catlin (who later become famous for his portraits of Native Americans in the West). Like the original, the print depicts a street view of “Paradise…