Search

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a non-profit organization known for its lineage-based membership. Members of the DAR must be able to trace their genealogy back to an individual connected to American Independence. In this letter, Eleanor Roosevelt responds to the DAR’s refusal in February 1939 to allow the black performer Marian Anderson to sing at their auditorium, Constitution Hall.

“When Mormons settled in Missouri in the 1830s, local residents found Mormon beliefs and practices not simply strange, but wrong. … The Mormons, the Missouri governor declared, must be removed—if not by expulsion, then by extermination.”

On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and prompted the United States to enter World War II. While many Americans were concerned about the war abroad, they were also paranoid about the “threat” of Japanese Americans at home. As a result, many Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps on American soil.

In 1830, the government began systematically removing all Native Americans from the Eastern United States. The removal of Cherokees from Georgia in 1838 has become known as the Trail of Tears. But there were, in fact, many such trails, as the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminoles and other tribes were forced to abandon their homelands.

“The Irish and the English share a long legacy of conflict.” And this conflict extended across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World as a wave of Catholic immigrants arrived in the United States in the 1820s.