Americana

The Beinecke Library’s major strengths in general Americana span the colonial period to the middle of the nineteenth century, complemented by important collections of twentieth century writers and photographers.

  • Fall exhibit at the Beinecke Library explores art and protest (Yale Daily News)

    September 14, 2023

    The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s newest exhibit, “Art, Protest, and the Archives,” probes the relationship and tensions between aesthetics and dissent. The exhibit premiered on Aug. 4 and will run through January. The first floor offers a chronological look at protest art over time, while the work upstairs is arranged by topic. Kevin Repp, a curator at the Beinecke, worked with other museum staff to create an exhibition that covers a vast geographical and temporal span.

  • Beinecke event highlights failed effort to make New Haven the site of America’s first HBCU (Yale Daily News)

    September 12, 2023

    Yale’s Beinecke Library hosted an event reflecting on the unsuccessful effort to establish the United States’ first Historically Black College/University in New Haven. The event, which was called “New Haven 1831: What Was and What Could Have Been,” was held on the 192nd anniversary of the very town meeting in 1831 where the proposal for the college was struck down in a 700-4 vote.

  • Beinecke Readings Examine Freedom From All Angles (New Haven Independentt)

    July 6, 2023

    The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds one of 26 known surviving copies of the first printing of the Declaration of Independence. The document, printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, has a single typographical error, an indication that the founders issued it in a hurry to declare independence from England. On Wednesday, a few dozen New Haveners got to hear the words of that revolutionary broadside read aloud — along with that of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 oration ​“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” — as part of an annual primary-source-focused tradition to celebrate the 247th anniversary of Independence Day.

  • Students win prizes for essays on American and Western American history and culture

    May 26, 2023

    At this year’s graduation ceremonies, three prizes were awarded to Yale College seniors whose essays explored topics in the fields of Americana or Western Americana. Unlike the library’s three other senior essay prizes—for which students submit their own work for consideration—these prizes are awarded based on recommendations from faculty members. Each prize winner received $200 and an award certificate.

  • In Memoriam: Howard R. Lamar, eminent historian and former Yale president

    February 24, 2023

    With the help of Archibald Hanna, the founding curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana, Lamar mined the rich collection of Western research materials donated to Yale by philanthropist William Robertson Coe. The result, a dissertation on territorial politics (later published as “Dakota Territory, 1861–1889”), marked a turn from the then-dominant “frontier thesis” promulgated by historian Frederick Jackson Turner to a more realist look at the forces of capitalism, culture, and environment in the development of the American West.

  • In "What Could Have Been," New Haven's Past Haunts Its Present (Arts Paper)

    February 23, 2023

    The year is 2023. Just beyond East and Water Streets, the nation’s first Historically Black College is gearing up for its 192nd anniversary. Balloons bob in the breeze outside. Buildings reach into the blue New Haven sky. Gulls cry and cackle above the water, and sound like they are laughing. All day, the nation’s most prominent Black scholars file in and out of the campus buildings, holding a history that is nearly two centuries old. Except, their path to that day never happened. The year is 2023, and the space is just an ocean of asphalt and road, with a labyrinth of highway winding above. It didn’t have to be this way.

  • Doc Reveals The New Haven HBCU That Could Have Been (New Haven Independent)

    February 23, 2023

    On Wednesday night at the New Haven Museum, New Haveners had a chance to learn, together, about an uncomfortable truth: that, in 1831, New Haven’s white community leaders overwhelming rejected a serious proposal to found what would have been the first U.S. Black college, on the land where the interchange of I‑95 and I‑91 now exists. That story is told in What Could Have Been: America’s First HBCU, a short and powerful documentary written by Tubyez Cropper and Michael Morand of the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library and directed and edited by Cropper. Released in April 2022, the film on Wednesday night enjoyed a robust audience at the museum on Whitney Avenue dedicated to New Haven’s history.