- Item Type > Diary/Letter (x)
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Young Women Ask Permission to Work in Lowell (with text supports)
Starting in the 1820s, a group of business owners built textile mills in New England, where for the first time, people could use machines to weave cotton into cloth. The first factories recruited women from rural New England as their labor force. [...]
Bayard Rustin Explains Car Pools in the Montgomery Bus Boycott
African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin advised Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the Montgomery bus boycott. In this excerpt from his diary, Rustin describes how the city's black residents found ways to get to and from work without [...]
African-American Women Threaten a Bus Boycott in Montgomery (with text supports)
In May 1954, the Women's Political Council of Montgomery, Alabama wrote a letter to the Mayor of Montgomery asking for changes that would make the city’s public bus system treat African-American riders with more fairness. The Women’s [...]
Mexican and Japanese Laborers Form a Union
In 1903, Mexican and Japanese farmworkers in Oxnard, California joined together to resist a wage cut by their employers. When they requested that their union be allowed to join the American Federation of Labor, President Samuel Gompers told the [...]
A Slave Ship Captain Negotiates with an African Ruler
As captain of the slave ship Sally on its 1764-1766 voyage, Esek Hopkins was responsible for recording information about his ship's trade with sellers and buyers of enslaved human cargo. This page from his log details the complex negotiations that [...]
Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris
Before the Civil War, David Golightly Harris (1824-1875) had been a small slaveholder in Spartanburg District, South Carolina. According to the 1860 census, he owned ten slaves and 550 acres of land, 100 of which he had under cultivation. Though not [...]
Angelina Grimke Argues for Women's Political Rights
In this letter Angelina Grimke, abolitionist and women's rights advocate, argues for the right of propertied women to participate in government through petitions despite their lack of enfranchisement. This letter was a part of a series of essays [...]
A Clergyman Encourages a Bolder New Deal (with text supports)
In September 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent a letter to clergyman across the United States, asking them whether conditions in their communities had improved since the start of the New Deal. He was particularly interested in people's [...]
Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens
During the Revolutionary War, Alexander Hamilton was a lieutenant colonel and George Washington's Aide-de-camp. He served with fellow soldier John Laurens directly alongside Washington. In 1779, two years into the war, Hamilton and Laurens parted [...]
Walt Whitman Writes about a Soldier's Love
Walt Whitman was one of America’s most influential poets in the 19th century, as well as an essayist and journalist. Whitman served as a nurse during the Civil War, where he developed close relationships with several of the men he tended. During [...]