A monthly roundup of Gilded Age and Progressive Era news articles and blog posts from around the web.
The Klu Klux Klan trials of 1871-1872, the rhetoric of persecution, and the politics of presidential pardons
Lessons from Theodore Roosevelt’s failed government efficiency commission
Considering the legacy of Grant’s Ku Klux Klan pardons
How white Americans used dinosaur fossils to redefine who was truly “American”
Birthright citizenship was tested—and upheld—in United States v. Wong Kim Ark
Immigrants have long been stigmatized using the language of contagion
Test your White House history knowledge with a quiz
The Library of Congress has launched a professional development module on copyright and primary sources
Wall calendars in historical photos
Hyperloop technology and 200 years of overhype and failure
The life of Matthew Henson, African American Arctic explorer
A place-based approach to teaching Civil War memory
Considering the legacy of the Black church through six historic sites
The history of gender-segregated public restrooms is a story of who gets to belong in public life
Reviving early-twentieth-century imperialist myths about the Panama Canal
Birthright citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment in historical perspective
When Woodrow Wilson upended the federal workforce over race
Greenland and the history of American expansion in the Arctic
Cases that demonstrate the breadth of rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment
Black women’s grassroots organizing before the Civil Rights Movement
The Department of Health and Human Services and the history of health regulations
Breaking down the myth that McKinley’s tariffs drove prosperity
Understanding dating conventions in the archives
Togo, the overlooked dog who helped deliver life-saving medicine to thousands of Nome children
President Garfield’s assassination and the dangers of politicizing the civil service
The long history of the anti-vaccine movement
Remembering the deadly sinking of the S.S. Pacific 150 years later
Teacher resources for Black History Month and teaching Black history year-round
The deadly quest to be the first to fly to the North Pole
Ketchup and the Pure Food Movement
Cover Image
Constructing the Panama Canal, 1913. Harris and Ewing Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Laura Crossley is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the SHGAPE Blog. She is a history PhD candidate at George Mason University, specializing in digital history and Indigenous histories. Her dissertation examines how political debates over land, statehood, and Native sovereignty in the American West played out at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.