Browsing: Historical & Cultural Context

Americans consume 7 billion chocolate chip cookies annually—and not just top seller Chips Ahoy! and…

Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United…

At a time when anti-literacy laws prevented the vast majority of enslaved people from reading,…

From songs and poetry to romantic doorstep cue cards, people have found countless ways to…

In the early United States, most presidents operated under something called the “spoils system.” This…

The penny was one of the first coins the U.S. Mint made after its establishment…

How did Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, get along with his fellow Founding Fathers? Not…

In 1868, Secretary of State William Seward went on a territory-shopping spree. A year earlier,…

When the Supreme Court ruled in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford case to strip…

In 1962, nearly a century after the 15th Amendment sought to protect the voting rights…