Drawing on personal letters, oral histories, and clandestine press, this article recovers the central but long-erased role of women in the Cuban insurrection of 1952–1959, challenging the masculine narrative of the Sierra Maestra and revealing the gender conflicts that shaped the revolutionary process.
Drawing on newspaper reports, eyewitness accounts, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s own words, this article explores how freedom songs became a powerful weapon in the civil rights movement, giving activists courage, unity, and hope during the 1950s and 1960s.
Drawing on eyewitness testimony and contemporary accounts, this article explores how Budapest’s Danube bridges became both the stage and the symbol of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution—from the student march across Margaret Bridge to the desperate flight of refugees over the Bridge at Andau.
Drawing on primary sources, this article reconstructs how Americans experienced 1945—from the shock of FDR’s death to the jubilant celebrations of V-E and V-J Day, the atomic bombings, and the anxieties of a postwar world.
Drawing on the analytical frameworks of The National Archives and the Library of Congress, this guide explains how historians examine photographs as primary sources—posing questions about production, context, reliability, and meaning.
Drawing on the millions of letters exchanged between soldiers and civilians during World War I, this article explores how correspondence sustained morale, circumvented censorship, and now offers historians an intimate window into the emotions and realities of wartime life.
Drawing on the daybooks of Carl Van Vechten, the letters of Langston Hughes, and contemporary records, this article reconstructs the Harlem Renaissance as its participants experienced it—through salons, music, art, and the daily texture of New York in the 1920s.
Drawing on contemporary reports and archival records, this article reconstructs the Katanga secession of 1960–63, when a mineral-rich province broke away from the newly independent Congo under Moïse Tshombe, backed by Belgian advisers and mercenaries.
Drawing on contemporary newspapers, letters, and official reports, this article reconstructs how Americans experienced the Red Scare of 1919–1920, when fears of a Bolshevik revolution swept the nation and the press both fueled and reflected the panic.
In 1945, nearly four million British servicemen and women returned from war to a homeland transformed by bombing, rationing, and social change. Drawing on contemporary accounts, this article explores the hopes, fears, and upheavals of demobilisation—the journey from khaki to ‘civvy street.’