Brown v. Board of Education: On This Day, May 17

Posted by Anna Khomina on

On May 17, 1954, the US Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, unanimously ruling that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson, which infamously permitted "separate but equal" facilities. Chief Justice Earl Warren responded directly to the 60-year-old case when he declared, "In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

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Register Now for the Constitution Day Voting Rights Forum on September 15

Join us Friday for the Gilder Lehrman Institute's Voting Rights Forum! Register here to livestream the forum from your home or school on September 15 at 2 pm ET. The Voting Rights Forum will be held at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. The panelists—representing a wide range of expert perspective on American history and politics—will discuss the history and evolution of voting rights as well as contemporary issues concerning voting and federalism:
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Announcing the 2023 National History Teacher of the Year Finalists

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is delighted to announce the ten finalists for the National History Teacher of the Year Award for 2023:
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Meet the 2023 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalists

Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History have announced the finalists for the twenty-fifth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize. This annual prize of $25,000 recognizes the best book written in English on the topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition published in the preceding year. The 2023 Frederick Douglass Book Prize finalists are
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Meet the 2023 George Washington Prize Finalists

Four books published in 2022 by the nation’s most prominent historians were recently named finalists for the George Washington Prize. The annual award recognizes the past year’s best works on the nation’s founding era, especially those that have the potential to advance a broad public understanding of early American history. The 2023 George Washington Prize finalists are
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Hamilton Education Program Online August Newsletter: Back in the Game for 2023-2024

Welcome to the official newsletter for the Hamilton Education Program Online, the program whose goal is to help students in grades 6–12 see the relevance of the Founding Era by using primary sources to create a performance piece (e.g., a song, rap, poem, or scene) following the model used by Lin-Manuel Miranda to create the musical Hamilton.
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State History Teachers of the Year Named in NHTOY 20th Anniversary Year

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is delighted to announce the 2023 State History Teachers of the Year.
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Recent Press Mentions

Graduation Ceremony Held for the Gettysburg College–Gilder Lehrman MA in American History

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On Saturday, July 15, Gettysburg College celebrated the achievements of graduates of the Gettysburg College–Gilder Lehrman MA in American History.
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International Press for GLI's Spanish-American Curriculum Partnership with the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute

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The Sentinel Interviews Kevin Weddle on Winning the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History

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"In today’s 5 Questions, The Sentinel gave Weddle the opportunity to delve deeper into the research and findings of his book that recently earned him the Gilder Lehrman Prize for Military History."
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