Peek in the Stacks

Originally, Saint Patrick’s Day was a religious celebration of the life of the patron saint of Ireland. The March 17^th celebration that bears his name is believed to be his death date in the year 461 CE. Saint Patrick is known for having brought Christianity to Ireland and, to a certain degree, to the Anglo-Saxon world.  As a young man in what is now the United Kingdom, he was abducted and enslaved in Ireland. During this period, he leaned on his Christian faith for solace...

Born in 1856, Elbert Hubbard became wealthy as a result of his work in a Buffalo, NY soap and mail order company. He decided to leave business in 1895, when he was 36 years old. Calling himself both an anarchist and a socialist, Hubbard worked to realize social, economic, political, and spiritual...

The Los Angeles Community Relations Committee (CRC) was founded in the early 20th century to work with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), B'nai B'rith, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the American Jewish Congress, the Council of Jewish Women, and other Zionist organizations to fight anti-Semitism in the United States. The core mission of the organization's founding continued as a through line, but by the close of the 20^th century CRC's focus expanded to include additional pressing international issues...

Laws protect the rights of a nation's citizens, but with regards to American slavery, were used as a tool to advance both pro- and anti-slavery efforts. Our understanding of the arc of American slavery and its aftermath is informed, in part, by the push and pull of laws that mark shifting social, political and economic environments. For instance, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 added Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. This guaranteed equal slave-state to free-state representation in the United States Senate, and also imposed geographical restrictions on where slavery could be practiced...