Between 1861 and 1868, Clara Barton, known as the Angel of the Battlefield and founder of the American Red Cross, lived in a Washington, DC boarding house on 7th street, NW. She employed twelve clerks on the third floor in her "Missing Soldiers Office," where they received over 60,000 letters from families searching for lost sons and husbands.

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Each week American Artifacts takes viewers into archives, museums and historic sites around the country. At the outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861, Washington, DC, was lightly defended and vulnerable to attack, with only one fort located 12 miles south of the city and the Confederate state of Virginia just across the Potomac River. By 1865, the nation’s capital arguably had become the most fortified city in the world, with about 70 armed forts and batteries encircling the city. We visited three of the surviving forts with Dale Floyd, author of a study on the Civil War Defenses of Washington for the National Park Service.

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The history of the transition from slavery to freedom for African Americans is told at the Gilmore Cabin on the grounds of James Madison's Montpelier in Virginia.  Born a slave for President Madison in 1810, George Gilmore and his wife Polly raised five children on a small sharecropper farm after emancipation.  Built by George Gilmore and his sons, the cabin is one of only a few existing freedman's homes left standing in the United States.

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In March of 1921 President Woodrow Wilson and his wife Edith left the White House at the conclusion of his second term and moved into a home on S Street near Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. Operated by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Woodrow Wilson House is now a museum. Frank Aucella gave a tour of the 28-room home and discussed the life and presidency of Woodrow Wilson. This is part one of a two-part program. In this portion the lower floors of the home were toured.

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Historians Peter Onuf, Ed Ayers, and Brian Balogh examine the history of beer and spirits in America on their public radio show "BackStory with the American History Guys." They staged the show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians and the National Council on Public History.

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50 years ago, on April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” while being held in prison for his involvement in a city-wide civil rights protest called the Birmingham Campaign. King’s daughter, Bernice King, CEO of the King Center in Atlanta, joins Alabama’s governor, Birmingham’s Mayor and others for the unveiling of a historical marker aside the Birmingham Jail.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham civil rights campaign. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after being arrested for taking part in the protests. The campaign gained national attention after local officials used dogs and water cannons on kids after they took to the streets in what was known as the “Children’s Crusade.” A panel of authors and historians recall the turmoil of the time, as well as how Birmingham has chosen to remember its past. This event was part of the Alabama Historical Association’s annual conference.

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At the direction of Congress, the voices and experiences from the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20^th century are being documented in an oral history project. This effort is a collaboration of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Library of Congress and the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

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This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Civil Rights Campaign in Alabama. The protests gained national attention after local officials used dogs and water cannons on kids after they took to the streets in what was known as the “Children’s Crusade.” This event features first-person accounts of the events in Birmingham that spring, including remarks by those who took part in the children’s protest, as well as student leaders of a boycott of segregated businesses. The discussion took place at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. 

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