American History

What's surprising to Jeffrey Norcross is how long it took for the South Jersey Museum of American History to open in Glassboro. The museum, which houses collections of artifacts from Pre-Columbian (Native American) to South Jersey glassmaking - all sorts of Americana that Norcross began collecting while growing up in Merchantville - opened on May 6 at its new location, 123 E. High St. It took 11 years of planning just to find and open the first place, a building in Berlin Borough where the history museum operated for five years until borough officials in 2001 refused to renew the lease, saying the town needed the building for office space.

Eighty-seven years ago - when black Americans were still terrorized by lynching - black historian Carter G. Woodson had a simple but powerful idea: Designate a week to celebrate the contributions that black Americans had made to their country. Woodson chose the second week of February to commemorate the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Negro History Week, as it was known, was an important development for its time. Back then, official history barely acknowledged the presence of black Americans, while popular culture actively diminished their humanity.

Richard M. Ketchum, 89, an author and editor who cofounded Country Journal, a magazine that offered a blend of the bucolic and the practical, particularly to city folk who had opted for the rural life, died Jan. 12 at a retirement home in Shelburne, Vt. Until four years ago, he had lived on his nearly 1,000-acre farm, Saddleback, in Dorset, Vt. Originally called Blair & Ketchum's Country Journal - it was started in 1974 by William S. Blair and Ketchum,...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, 88, the influential Democrat who broke racial barriers on Capitol Hill and played key roles in congressional investigations of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, died Monday. Sen. Inouye, in office since January 1963, was currently the longest-serving senator and was president pro tempore of the Senate, third in the line presidential succession. His office said Monday that he died of respiratory complications at a Washington-area hospital.

The only thing I hate about Bruce Graham's new play, Mr. Hart & Mr. Brown , is that I can't really tell you much about it without giving away its several surprises. And if you see it at People's Light & Theatre Company, where it's getting a remarkable world premiere and is an engrossing story for a summer's night, you shouldn't, either. Let everyone be as pleasantly surprised as you'll be. Graham, the prolific Philadelphia-based playwright who gets better with each new work, takes Mr. Hart & Mr. Brown straight from a footnote to American history - like many footnotes, quirky and hard-to-believe and about a character well-known for a time and now completely faded from the national psyche.

Politicians have been lying since the dawn of the republic. Calling them out is an exercise in futility, roughly akin to handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. But, every so often, a lie is so shamelessly brazen that it behooves us to bemoan it. Witness the Republican talking point du jour, about how President Obama has supposedly slapped a humongous tax hike on the middle class, thanks to his health-reform provision that requires most...

By Richard SlotkinThe Battle of Antietam, 150 years ago this week, was the bloodiest day of combat in American history. On D-Day, U.S. forces suffered 5,200 casualties out of a force of 50,000, roughly 10 percent of those engaged. At Antietam, the Union army lost 13,000 out of 73,000 (16.5 percent), and the Confederates 12,500 out of fewer than 40,000, or about 30 percent. The battle ended in stalemate, but became a technical Union victory when the battered Confederates retreated to Virginia.

As a child, Jeffrey Norcross loved history. His mother nurtured that love by taking him to museums and historical sites throughout the state. Soon, their trips took them all over the country. He dreamed of one day having a national-scope museum in South Jersey. So he made it his mission to preserve history from all over the country. He first collected coins and political items, then he began to collect fossils. "It was something I liked to do," said Norcross. "As I got older, I never stopped.

About 25 years ago Ernest N. May opened the doors to the collection of his dreams, the Hillendale Museum. Tucked off Route 52 in the hills of Pennsbury Township, the museum housed the results of May's love for geography and American history. It was not the most-visited museum around, nor was it the most elaborate, but during its 23 years of operation, it was a passion passed from father to son. The museum closed about three years ago, but now it may open once again. This time, however, it will offer education in a different way. Its exhibits may be replaced with desks and blackboards if the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District is successful in its plan to turn the museum into an elementary school.

JEB BUSH says he's going to have to brush up on U.S. history. The former Florida governor has been named the next chairman of Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, a post formerly held by his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and now held by former President Bill Clinton. Bush, 59, says that he's been reading up on U.S. history to prepare for the job. "I want to learn about the past so I can think about the future," he said. He said he feels a cultural shift is brewing in the U.S., and he wants to be prepared for it. "I think there's going to be a time of cultural change in our country," he said, "and typically these have been done in ways that people don't anticipate.

  It's hard to know where to begin with Gordon M. Marshall Jr. - the minute or the monumental, the centuries-old paper or the granite. From 1971 until 1993, he was assistant librarian at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Benjamin Franklin-founded repository of American history. Early on, he revived the exhibition program and designed such notable shows as "The Larder Invaded," a cook's tour of 300 years of local culinaria. In retirement, Mr. Marshall built a church.

Eighty-seven years ago - when black Americans were still terrorized by lynching - black historian Carter G. Woodson had a simple but powerful idea: Designate a week to celebrate the contributions that black Americans had made to their country. Woodson chose the second week of February to commemorate the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Negro History Week, as it was known, was an important development for its time. Back then, official history barely acknowledged the presence of black Americans, while popular culture actively diminished their humanity.

WASHINGTON - Senators bickered Sunday over who's to blame for sending the country lurching toward a year-end "fiscal cliff," bemoaning the lack of a deal days before the deadline but bridging no differences in the debate. With the collapse Thursday of House Speaker John Boehner's plan to allow tax rates to rise on million-dollar-plus incomes, Sen. Joe Lieberman said: "It's the first time that I feel it's more likely we'll go over the cliff than not," meaning that higher taxes for most Americans and painful federal agency budget cuts would be in line to go into effect automatically.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, 88, the influential Democrat who broke racial barriers on Capitol Hill and played key roles in congressional investigations of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, died Monday. Sen. Inouye, in office since January 1963, was currently the longest-serving senator and was president pro tempore of the Senate, third in the line presidential succession. His office said Monday that he died of respiratory complications at a Washington-area hospital.

JEB BUSH says he's going to have to brush up on U.S. history. The former Florida governor has been named the next chairman of Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, a post formerly held by his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and now held by former President Bill Clinton. Bush, 59, says that he's been reading up on U.S. history to prepare for the job. "I want to learn about the past so I can think about the future," he said. He said he feels a cultural shift is brewing in the U.S., and he wants to be prepared for it. "I think there's going to be a time of cultural change in our country," he said, "and typically these have been done in ways that people don't anticipate.

The book chosen for next year's One Book, One Philadelphia tells a story many American families keep hidden in the attics of memory. For that reason alone, it's a very American tale. It's Julie Otsuka's Buddha in the Attic , a fictional retelling of the personal odysseys of hundreds of Japanese "picture brides" who sailed from Japan to the United States in the 1920s to marry men, most of them itinerant Japanese workers without other options, who had arranged for a wife to be sent over.

IN 1968, WHILE showing insurance executives an old slave auction block in New Orleans, Edward W. Robinson Jr. had a vision. He'd been explaining how many African slaves were learned people and skilled tradesmen when they'd been brought to America in shackles. He then saw a crowd of people dressed in magnificent African garb. One of them called out to him in a loud, booming voice, "Edward, tell them who we are. " Robinson, who would go on to serve as Pennsylvania's deputy secretary of state, as Philly's managing director under Mayor Green and on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, decided at that moment to make it his life's mission to teach people that African-American history didn't start with slavery - there had been universities and all kinds of advancement taking place in Africa long before slave ships started showing up to raid the continent.

Local historians can jump into the longstanding controversy of whether Betsy Ross stitched the first American flag at a new mini-exhibit at the legend's house. Defenders of Betsy Ross, whose story as the mother of the American flag first splashed into popular consciousness in the 1870s, have been warding off questions about her place in American history for more than a century. Ross's place in history as the mother of the flag grew out of a meeting that she had in late May 1776 with Gen. George Washington and fellow flag committee members Robert Morris and George Ross, her late husband's uncle.

By Grant Calder 'Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process. " The second part of John F. Kennedy's observation probably still holds true. But does anyone talk to kids these days about growing up to be president? Among my 11th-grade American history students, one recalled his third-grade teacher telling him that if he kept at his spelling, he might grow up to be president. Another said a grandparent had talked to him about the possibility.

By Richard SlotkinThe Battle of Antietam, 150 years ago this week, was the bloodiest day of combat in American history. On D-Day, U.S. forces suffered 5,200 casualties out of a force of 50,000, roughly 10 percent of those engaged. At Antietam, the Union army lost 13,000 out of 73,000 (16.5 percent), and the Confederates 12,500 out of fewer than 40,000, or about 30 percent. The battle ended in stalemate, but became a technical Union victory when the battered Confederates retreated to Virginia.