- Item Type > Diary/Letter (x)
We found 119 items that match your search
A Letter from Perry Watkins on his Mistreatment in the Army
Perry Watkins was a gay African American soldier who was drafted to serve in the army during the Vietnam War. He was open about his sexuality throughout his entire career. Despite this, in 1981, the army revoked his security clearance after 13 years [...]
A Committee of Freedmen on Edisto Island Reveal Their Expectations
This letter was written by a group of freedmen to the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land (known as the Freedmen’s Bureau). The freedmen were from Edisto Island, South Carolina, an area that came under Union [...]
Coal Miners' Final Messages (1902)
Working as a coal miner in the early 20th century was incredibly dangerous. In addition to the dangers faced by miners, coal mining has a considerably detrimental impact on the environment. On May 19, 1902, a coal mine exploded near Fraterville, [...]
A Sharecropper Explains Why He Joined the Exodusters (1879)
John Solomon Lewis of Leavenworth, Kansas, wrote this letter on June 10, 1879. Lewis and his family were among thousands of African Americans known as "Exodusters" who escaped the harsh economic difficulties and racist systems of the Reconstruction [...]
Jourdon Anderson Responds to his Former Enslaver (1865)
After the Civil War, many former enslavers in the South were desperate to not lose laborers and attempted to maintain control over formerly enslaved people. One such former enslaver, P.H. Anderson, contacted a formerly enslaved man named Jourdon [...]
An Indentured Servant Asks Parents for Help (1623)
Indentured servitude was a system of labor in which a person had to work for four to seven years without pay in exchange for passage to the “New World.” Employers in Virginia (often planters) were expected to supply servants' housing, food, and [...]
An Indentured Servant Writes Home (1756)
In the eighteenth-century Chesapeake region, female indentured servants faced particular vulnerabilities. Indentured servitude was a system of labor in which a person had to work for four to seven years without pay in exchange for passage to the [...]
An Alaskan Community Opposes Expanded Oil Drilling (2023)
ConocoPhillips is the largest producer of oil in Alaska. In 2020, the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved the company’s Willow project, allowing ConocoPhillips to drill on public land on the North Slope for three decades and to [...]
Indigenous Activists Claim Alcatraz Island (1969)
On November 20, 1969, eighty-nine Native Americans, led by activist Richard Oakes, seized control of Alcatraz. From 1934 until 1963 this small island in San Francisco Bay had been home to the federal prison Alcatraz. Nicknamed "The Rock," the [...]