The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Phillis Wheatley, slave, child prodigy, poet, and founder of the African American writing tradition, is depicted here in the frontispiece of her breakthrough book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (London, 1773). Her brilliance impressed Americans and Britons alike and she was held up as an exemplar of the abilities of African people.

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Copies of the Philadelphia printing of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) were sent to the thirteen colonies and then reprinted locally to spread the news to outlying areas. On the left is the Philadelphia 1776 version of the Declaration, as reprinted in 1823 by order of President John Quincy Adams, who worried that the 1776 document would be lost. On the right is the only surviving copy of the Charleston, South Carolina 1776 printing, recently rediscovered. Note that by signing his name, the printer, Peter Timothy, literally put his life on the line.

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

On the left is the first page of the working draft of the U.S. Constitution, used for discussion at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in August 1787. On the right is page one of the Constitution as it was finally published. Where the draft preamble reflects the sense of the thirteen states as separate entities, the final version—“We, the People of the United States”—reveals a new self-definition, that of a single unified nation. (Left: Draft of the United States Constitution with notes by Pierce Butler, August 6, 1787. Right: United States Constitution inscribed by Benjamin Franklin to his nephew Jonathan Williams, September 17, 1787)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Runaway slave ads were a reality in America as long as slavery existed, as these two broadsides from Maryland in 1791 and Missouri in 1852 attest. Under close scrutiny, the lives of particular slaves begin to emerge in fragmentary details, including names, physical descriptions, talents, personalities, and other hints of their individuality. (Left: Runaway slave broadside, Frederick County, Maryland, 1791. Right: Runaway slave broadside, St. Louis, Missouri, 1852)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This elaborate and stinging broadside, replete with detailed evidence, was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1836 to condemn the persistence of slavery in the nation’s capital. It was not until April 1862 that Congress passed and Abraham Lincoln signed into law the bill that ended slavery in Washington, D.C. (Broadside published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in New York, 1836)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Newly nominated presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, photographed two weeks after the Republican National Convention in Chicago that catapulted him to national prominence and, ultimately, the Presidency. (Photograph taken June 3, 1860, by Alexander Hesler, Springfield, Illinois)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Two of the nineteen images sketched by a private in the Union army (Henry Berckhoff, Company B, 8th New York Infantry) offer glimpses into a soldier’s life during the Civil War: a scene in camp near Hunter’s Chapel, Virginia, in 1861, and a fiery battle at Haymarket, Virginia, in 1862. (Watercolors by Henry Berckhoff, 1861–1863)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Designed by a 14-year-old Californian and signed by Abraham Lincoln, this unique copy of the Emancipation Proclamation conveys in its layout the precision with which the President crafted this monumental document. (Engraving published in San Francisco, California, 1864)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

After the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, posters such as this broadcast a national call for black men to enlist in the Union army. Frederick Douglass (third name, left column) and other African American leaders endorsed the appeal, and by war’s end almost 200,000 African Americans had served in the Union forces. (Philadelphia, 1863)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

The fatigue and strain of three years of war show in this photograph of President Lincoln, taken eleven days before he gave the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the national cemetery near the battlefield. (Photograph taken November 8, 1863, by Alexander Gardner, Washington D.C.)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Delivered when the defeat of the Confederacy was known to be imminent, this address reflects both President Lincoln’s forgiveness toward the South and his eloquent use of language. The blue ink is significant: copies published after Lincoln’s death (April 15, 1865) were printed in black, as a gesture of mourning. (Broadside, c. March 4-early April 1865)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Here legislation takes symbolic form. The artist depicts African Americans’ hopes arising from the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870: education, family life, jobs, and the vote. Among the collage of images are portraits of Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln. (Broadside published in New York, NY, 1870)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

The great orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass was a self-emancipated former slave from Maryland who published his autobiographical Narrative in 1845, and led the fight against slavery and racism until his death in 1895. (Portrait by unknown photographer, c. 1870)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

These two political broadsides, one from New Jersey, the other from New York, present separate but parallel reasons for men and women to support the women’s suffrage movement. Begun in the 1840s, the political struggle culminated with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, enfranchising women as voters. (Left: Broadside printed for the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, Plainfield, New Jersey, c. 1915; Right: Broadside printed for the Woman Suffrage Party of the City of New York, New York, 1915)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Against a background of African American patriotism, self-sacrifice, and courage, an idealized black soldier takes his leave in this World War I recruiting poster. More than 350,000 African Americans, trained and deployed in segregated units, served in the U.S. military during the War, of whom 42,000 saw action in Europe. (Print by E.G. Renesch, Chicago, Illinois, 1918)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Abolitionists had campaigned since the late 1780s on the motto “Am I not a man and a brother?” This placard carried by striking garbagemen in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, echoed that rhetoric and emphatically answered the question. Martin Luther King Jr. marched with the strikers that day, then was assassinated that evening. (Memphis, Tennessee, April 1968)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Despite inaccuracies in scale and detail, this 1733 map shows the sweep of British colonial possessions in the New World set amidst their French and Spanish counterparts. (Map of the British Empire, by Henry Popple, published in London, 1733)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This map of the United States in 1862, amidst the Civil War, shows the Confederate states in pink, the Union states and territories in green, and the border slave-holding states and territories in yellow. (London, 1862. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

As tensions heightened following the “Boston massacre” of March 1770, Paul Revere published this engraving that recalls the military occupation of Boston by the British army and navy in 1768. Protests against British taxes and policies boiled up in the late 1760s and early 1770s until war broke out in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord. (Print by Paul Revere, Boston, Mass., 1770)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This recruiting poster of 1863 uses images of the past (deliverance from slavery) and the future (education and civil rights) to inspire African Americans to enlist and fight for the Union. By the end of the war, some 200,000 African Americans—like those seen going into battle at upper right—had served the Union forces.

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This 1863 photograph of two recently emancipated children from New Orleans was used in a fundraising campaign to support schools and social programs for former slaves in Louisiana. The complexity of racial categories and the legacy of the “one drop” rule are readily evident. (Photograph by Kimball, New York, NY, 1863)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This 1890 print commemorates the heroic attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in July 1863 by the famous 54th Massachusetts Regiment, one of the first black regiments in the Union army. Although the attack failed, the conduct of the 54th established the fitness and courage of African American soldiers. (Kurz & Allison, Chicago, Ill., 1890)

Having emancipated herself from slavery in New York in 1826, Sojourner Truth (c. 1797-1883) went on to become a leading abolitionist and advocate for the rights of African Americans and women. This 1864 photograph was widely reproduced to raise funds for her work on the behalf of newly freed slaves.

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This recruiting poster for African American soldiers builds its message on the themes of emancipation, manhood, and pride in the black regiments already fighting for the Union in the Civil War. By the end of the war, some 200,000 African Americans had served in the Union military. (Ringwalt & Brown, Philadelphia, Penn., 1864)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This pictorial history of black people in America was designed as a poster for the Negro Exhibition Building at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville, 1897. Each scene captures a moment or figure in African American history from the introduction of the first slaves in Jamestown in 1619 and the death of Crispus (here, Christopher) Attucks in the Revolutionary era, to the lives of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and all the ordinary black people chronicled at lower right. (Goes Litho. Co., Chicago, Ill., 1897)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Land Grant. For the first time, public land was set aside in recognition of America’s natural resources as a vital part of the nation’s cultural heritage. California turned the Yosemite site over to the federal government in 1906, and it became part of Yosemite National Park. (Photograph of Yosemite Falls, c. 1906. Courtesy Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

In 1871, a partnership of ordinary citizens and railroad executives persuaded government officials to withhold a large portion of Wyoming Territory from a public land auction, in recognition of its importance as an example of the grandeur and diversity of America’s natural resources. An Act of Congress in 1872, signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, made Yellowstone the first national park in the world. Since then, the United States has designated nearly 400 national parks, sites, and monuments to preserve the nation’s natural, historical, and cultural heritage. (Photograph of the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River, by William Henry Jackson, 1871. Courtesy Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president, sits at his desk in 1906, the year he created two national parks (Platt and Mesa Verde) and five national monuments (among them Petrified Forest NM), and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the Portsmouth Treaty, ending the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. (Photograph by Harris and Ewing, Washington, D.C., 1906. From the Gilder Lehrman Collection.)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

These suffragists demonstrating in New York in 1917 were part of a larger movement dating back to the mid 1800s. The suffragist marches of the early 20th century became a powerful tool in shaping public opinion, and their techniques would be revived during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, finally guaranteed women the right to vote. (Courtesy of the Collections of the New-York Historical Society)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This multilingual poster of 1917 offers assistance to immigrants whose lives had been uprooted by World War I. The translations into German, Hungarian, Czech, Hebrew, and Italian reflect the home countries of large numbers of people recently arrived in the United States. (Courtesy of the Collections of the New-York Historical Society)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This World War I recruiting poster invokes the memory of Abraham Lincoln and the bravery of black troops to inspire African Americans to sign up. Ultimately, some 350,000 African Americans enlisted and served in World War I, although in segregated units. (Charles Gustrine, Chicago, Ill., 1918)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

By juxtaposing World War II soldiers with idealized Revolutionary War soldiers from 1778, this 1943 poster encourages Americans to understand World War II as part of the nation’s history and purpose since its founding. (Office of War Information, Washington, D.C., 1943. Courtesy of the Collections of the New-York Historical Society)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

This placard worn by grieving marchers the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1968), in Memphis, Tenn., dramatizes the enduring strength of King’s messages. (Allied Printing, April 5, 1968)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

In September 1957, after school integration was federally mandated, nine courageous black teenagers in Little Rock, Arkansas were the first African American students to enroll at Central High School. Elizabeth Eckford (pictured here) and her fellow students were screamed at and harassed, and the National Guard was called on to escort the students and quell rioting. Of the nine students, three went on to graduate from Central High, while six completed their education elsewhere. (Photograph, September 6, 1957. ©Bettmann/CORBIS.)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.

In the summer of 1963, nine years after the U.S. Supreme Court overthrew the doctrine of “separate but equal” in public education (Brown v. Board of Education), parents of African American children joined with the NAACP to protest unfair educational practices in St. Louis, Missouri. They demanded, in particular, an increase in the number of minority teachers, the redrawing of school district boundaries, and an end to intact busing, which brought black students to white schools but kept them in segregated classes running on a different time schedule from the white students’ classes. The St. Louis school board promised changes, but twenty years were to pass before integration became reality. (Photograph, July 27, 1963. ©Bettmann/CORBIS)

All posters are 22" x 30", full color, and printed on a semi-gloss ecru stock. Each one features a caption which places the image in historical context.