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Posted by: Jennifer González
On March 3, 1845, Florida became the 27th state to join the United States. People first reached Florida at least 12,000 years ago. Because the sea level was much lower then, Florida was nearly twice the size it is today. Florida is the site of the earliest visit to the continental U.S. by European explorers …
Posted in: Education, Law Library
Posted by: Jennifer González
Last year, we added Statutes at Large to our Digitized Material page. Initially, each Congress from 1789-1950 had a webpage that included a large PDF file of all statutes for that congressional session. Then we began splitting the large PDF documents into smaller pieces, which meant that we had to browse each statute, add metadata to …
Posted in: Collections, Education, Law Library
Posted by: Jennifer González
In celebration of Native American History Month, we have just added 428 Native American documents containing constitutions, charters, and acts from the years 1830 to 1960.
Posted in: Collections, Education, Law Library, Native Americans
Posted by: Margaret Wood
We often blog about various commemorative events, and I wanted to draw attention to November as National American Indian Heritage Month. This began as a commemorative week in 1986 when Congress passed Pub.L. 99-471 designating November 23-30 as American Indian Week. As directed by Congress in this law, President Reagan issued Presidential Proclamation 5577 in which …
Posted in: In the News
Posted by: Nathan Dorn
New Jersey was once “the Two Jerseys” (East and West). Kentucky started out as Virginia’s backyard. Connecticut once harbored imperial dreams—claiming a Western Reserve that stretched all the way to the banks of the Mississippi. The shapes of our States have a complex and unexpected history. It’s easy to forget that history owes a debt to …
Posted in: Collections, Education, Law Library
Posted by: Andrew Weber
The following is a guest post by Steve Clarke, Senior Foreign Law Specialist. As Kelly Buchanan mentioned a couple of weeks ago, on December 10, 2010, Law Librarian Roberta Shaffer moderated a panel discussion in which each of the four participants addressed an aspect of the Cultural Property Rights of Indigenous People in recognition of …
Posted in: Global Law, Guest Post, Law Library
Posted by: Jennifer Davis
Today on the blog, Jennifer explains the Federal Indian Boarding school program, the origins of Orange Shirt Day, and the relationship of the U.S. Federal Indian Boarding school program to Canada's residential school program.
Posted in: Collections, In the News, Native Americans
Posted by: Bailey DeSimone
For St. Patrick's Day and National Irish-American Heritage Month, Bailey looks into the collections to learn a bit more about how Irish-American culture manifested in the United States, immigration law that affected it, and Congressional recognition of the Irish Free State in the 1920s.
Posted in: Collections, Law Library
Posted by: Jennifer González
A blog article detailing the life of a locally known and nationally forgotten figure: Thomas Mundy Peterson who was the first African American to vote in the United States following the ratification of the fifteenth amendment in 1870.
Posted in: Guest Post, Law Library