Blog Posts by Subject: History of North America

If this novel about 1970s California rock 'n' roll has you listening to Fleetwood Mac, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Joni Mitchell, this reading list—and Spotify playlist—is for you.

What can a look at the Oregon Trail expeditions tell us about future exploration?

World War I is called "The Great War" but in America it could also be called "The Forgotten War." We started celebrating Veteran’s Day on November 11, 1919 as a way to commemorate the day that hostilities in World War I ended.

Interested in learning more about New York's role, and the early battles of the American Revolution? Inspired by Hamilton?

Check out four of the top online exhibitions highlighting African Americans in honor of Black History Month.

West Indian immigrants form the largest Black immigrant group in the city and most likely nationwide, though they represent individually small nations. This weekend the collective will come together to throw the biggest party in our city.

A New York woman's interactions with women of different cultures on the northern frontier of the American Revolution.

The tense New York State elections of 1800, as seen through the diary of Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker.

Already being touted as one of the best horror films of the year, The Witch is the story of a New England family that slowly begins to fall apart when they are banished from their Pilgrim community. Writer and Director Robert Eggers recently mentioned in an interview that he used the library's resources to do research for the film.

A love letter from musician and composer Nathan Woodard to his wife and creative collaborator Alice Childress.

We often bemoan the recent politicization of the federal courts and especially appointments to the Supreme Court, but this has been a source of political strife since the creation of the federal judiciary. The judicial politics of the Jeffersonian era help explain why the Supreme Court remains such a charged issue in our own time.

Today’s episode features a memorable love note from leading Harlem Renaissance painter, illustrator, and graphic artist Aaron Douglas to his wife and life partner Alta Sawyer Douglas, an esteemed educator and Harlemite.

Here is a list of biographies that will take the reader well beyond high school history and National Gallery portraits to understand these men as anything but clear-cut themselves.

Elizabeth De Hart Bleecker lived through a tumultuous period in the history of labor in New York City. Here is a page from her diary, 216 years ago today.

Today’s letter features correspondence between Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and Langston Hughes. In the excerpt below, Schomburg speaks with Hughes regarding acquisitions for The Division of Negro Literature, History and Prints—the forerunner to today’s Schomburg Center.

On September 15, 1780, Hannah Lawrence Schieffelin “abandoned the paternal mansion that so long bounded my wishes,” boarded a “small vessel,” and left her home in New York for Quebec. Her narrative describes events, peoples, and places far removed from the center of the American Revolutionary struggle.

Periodically, for the next year, we will write blog posts featuring a single entry, or a series of entries, from the Bleecker diary: a source from and about New York City in its formative era.

Political elites are well represented in archival collections. One of the great virtues for historians is that a lot of their family correspondence survives, though it is not always included in edited volumes that focus on political events. Through these papers we can glimpse family life at an emotional level.

The BCC records is an important resource for understanding the American Revolution. But it is also a massive and unwieldy one. To make things easier, I've put together a list of nine important and representative documents from the BCC records, which, taken together, offer a rough outline of the BCC's activities and functions during the 1770s and 1780s, as well as a sense of the Committee's place in the larger story of the American Revolution.