In 1845, Congress designated the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November as Election Day for presidential elections by federal law. Today, we invite you to explore the history of elections in America with resources from the Gilder Lehrman Institute archives! Go HERE for Voting and Election Laws and History. Election Day resources Why the 1876 election was…
Read More Explore the history of elections in AmericaCongress.gov Congress.gov – the source for U.S. Legislative Information Videos on the Legislative Process Get to Know the New Congress … Right from the Source Free Constitution Ebook for Teachers and Students The Constitution: Student Discovery Set ExternalThis interactive ebook for iPads lets students zoom in on and annotate primary source documents from the drafts and debates…
Read More Constitution Day ResourcesOn September 4, 1781, the eleven men, eleven women, and twenty-two children recruited by Alta California Governor Felipe de Neve founded El Pueblo de la Reyna de Los Angeles (The Town of the Queen of the Angels). They had gathered in August at the Mission San Gabriel in New Spain (present-day Mexico) and traveled together to arrive at…
Read More The Town of the Queen of AngelsBy Danny McDonald Globe Staff, Updated July 15, 2022, 6:03 p.m. But white supremacist movements have deep roots in Massachusetts and New England, historians said. While the displays of propaganda are shockingly hateful and vile, they are far from new. The Colonists, of course, codified slavery in Massachusetts in 1641, more than a century before the United States…
Read More In progressive Massachusetts, a long history of white supremacyThis day in history: ‘Disco Demolition Night’ On this day in 1979, nearly 50,000 people packed Comiskey Park on the southwest side of Chicago to watch local DJ and notorious disco hater Steve Dahl blow up a bunch of disco records in between a White Sox doubleheader. “Disco Demolition Night” remains one of the seminal…
Read More Disco Demolition NightThe sovereign citizen movement is a loose grouping of primarily American litigants, activists, tax protesters, financial scheme promoters, and conspiracy theorists, who claim to be answerable only to their particular interpretations of the common law and to not be subject to any government statutes or proceedings unless they consent to them. The sovereign citizen movement is one of the main contemporary…
Read More Do You Know What the Sovereign Citizen Movement Is?By Harry Bruinius Staff writer, Christian Science Monitor June 24, 2022 In a 6-3 majority ruling on Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision giving women the right to abortion. In anticipation of the ruling last week, the Monitor interviewed Geoffrey R. Stone, author of the legal history “Sex and the Constitution.”…
Read More A history of American thought on abortion: It’s not what you thinkBY OLIVIA B. WAXMAN JULY 1, 2022 4:19 PM EDT While Founding Fathers behind that document like John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are household names, there were many men and women who played an important role in shaping America in its infancy who are not as well known, This is especially the case for women and minorities. Native Americans, furthermore, had their own…
Read More Beyond the Founding Fathers: 12 Unsung Figures Who Helped Build AmericaJuly 2, 2022 by Scott Bomboy Officially, the Continental Congress declared its freedom from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, when it voted to approve a resolution submitted by delegate Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved…
Read More When is the real Independence Day: July 2 or July 4?