Explore South Africa’s tumultuous history from the early interactions between white European settlers and native African tribes to the implementation of apartheid and the long struggle for democracy.
Explore South Africa’s tumultuous history from the early interactions between white European settlers and native African tribes to the implementation of apartheid and the long struggle for democracy.
Arch Oboler’s 1938 radio play, performed by Katharine Hepburn, pleaded with American audiences to offer more aid to Jewish refugee children. It aired as the country debated over the Wagner-Rogers Bill (Joint Resolution 64).
Interfaith leader Eboo Patel talks about what it takes to build a healthy, religiously diverse democracy.
Political scientist John Carey discusses the importance of the rule of law in making democracy work.
The letter exchange between George Washington and the Hebrew congregation of Newport was not the only landmark event in the early history of America that dealt with issues of religious freedom and identity. Seixas’ letter and Washington’s subsequent response exist within a timeline of many other events during which the newly formed country faced those issues. Continue reading below for information about some of those events.
Two Jews meet with a Polish courier during the Grossaktion Warsaw in summer 1942, imploring him to tell the world what was happening to Jews.
Waitstill Sharp describes how he and and his wife, Martha, were asked to begin relief work in Czechoslovakia aiding refugees from Nazi occupation.
Download a PDF of the transcript or read the text below.
Listen to the introduction from day one of the UDHR Workshop.
The horrors of World War II, the new and frightening power of the atomic bomb, and the Nazi genocide of Jews and of others deemed unworthy to live shocked the consciences of people all over the world in 1945. This capacity and desire to destroy whole populations of humanity prompted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to warn that "In the end...we are 'One World' and that which injures any one of us, injures all of us."
Welcome to Day 3. Today we’ll focus on reasons human rights was controversial in the post-war United States and why “civil” rights, instead, became the focus. This session will also model a literacy strategy known as close read activity.
Welcome to Day 5, our final session of the week. Today we’ll focus on the legacies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that was not given the rule of law over the laws of individual sovereign states but nonetheless holds a great deal of influence over human rights legislation and promotion since its inception.
In 1935, W. E. B. Du Bois published an influential book titled Black Reconstruction in America. This audio excerpt, from a chapter titled “The Propaganda of History,” questions the ways in which Reconstruction was being studied and taught at the time.