Today's blog post comes from National Archives social media intern Anna Fitzpatrick. January 1 marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. While this document is remembered for freeing the slaves in the Southern states, petitioners had been attempting to end slavery since the nation’s founding. Petitions by anti-slavery groups were sent to the newly … Continue reading Emancipation Proclamation: Petitioning for Freedom
Today's guest post comes from Susan Donius, Director of the Office of Presidential Libraries at the National Archives. This post originally appeared on the White House blog. Did you know that before the 1940s, Thanksgiving was not on a fixed date but was whenever the President proclaimed it to be? George Washington issued the first … Continue reading Thanksgiving with the Presidents
Today's post is by Duke Blackwood, Director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Follow them on their Facebook page. One normally doesn’t associate turkeys with flying. However, in 1966 they became synonymous with flight during Ronald Reagan’s first race for political office—Governor of California. Covering such a large state was advance man Curtis Patrick’s nightmare, … Continue reading Reagan and the “Turkey Bird”
Today's post comes from Sam Anthony, special assistant to the Archivist of the United States. When President Obama visited Thailand on Sunday, he brought a piece of the National Archives as a diplomatic gift. In preparation for the President's trip to Asia, the Protocol Office of the State Department asked for facsimiles of photographs of … Continue reading The King and (Archives) I
Can you search for "Wikileaks" on the National Archives web site? Yes and no. On Saturday morning, November 3, we learned via Twitter that a search for “Wikileaks” on the National Archives web site archives.gov brought up an error notice stating that the URL was banned. However, even at the same time, a search for … Continue reading Looking for “Wikileaks”?
Today's post originally appeared in the 2012 Summer Issue of Prologue magazine, and was written by Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero. The Electoral College. Established 1787. It isn’t really a college, and the electors aren’t tenured professors. The electors are really voters, and their votes count in a very big way. The … Continue reading To Choose a President
Today's post comes from Nikita Buley, an intern in the National Archives Office of Strategy and Communications. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is located in Simi Valley, California—about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles—and holds over 60 million pages of documents, 1.6 million photographs, hundreds of thousands of feet of audiovisual material, and … Continue reading Archives Spotlight: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum
Still trying to think of a clever costume to wear on Halloween? We've listed some of our favorite suggestions below. (And if anyone actually takes us up on these suggestions, please send us a picture!) I Like Ike! Are you a power couple? How about combining the the upcoming election with some historic campaign fun … Continue reading Costume inspiration from the National Archives!
October is American Archives Month! To celebrate, we’re running a series of “spotlights” on the many locations that make up the National Archives. Today's post features the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, and was written by Rick Blondo, management and program analyst at the National Archives. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the … Continue reading Archives Spotlight: Making the Constitution accessible
Today's post comes from Nikita Buley, an intern in the National Archives Office of Strategy and Communications. The National Archives is on the West Coast, too! The National Archives at San Francisco (located in San Bruno, California) contains over 55,000 cubic feet of Federal records from the 1850s through the 1980s. The records come from … Continue reading Archives Spotlight: San Francisco
