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The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in January 1865 and ratified by the states in December of the same year, proclaimed an end to slavery...

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This amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to those born in the United States, guaranteeing the rights of citizenship and equal...

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The 15th Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress in 1869 and ratified by the states in 1870. It guaranteed that the right to vote would be...

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This document is the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guarantees women the right to vote. The amendment was first introduced to Congress in 1878 and it...

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This painting depicts the adoption of the Polish constitution of 1791, just four years after the U.S. produced the world’s first written constitution. The Polish document, which introduced...

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This portrait of Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia was done by the American painter, Charles Willson Peale. The painting depicts Rush, who was an author, physician, statesman, and social...

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South African’s black majority voted for the first time in these 1994 elections. The result was the end of white minority rule. The African National Congress became the...

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This photograph shows demonstrators during the Velvet Revolution, Czechoslovakia’s non-violent pro-democracy movement. As the Soviet Union collapsed, Communist governments fell throughout Eastern Europe. In late 1989, peaceful protest...

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In Poland, this labor union, Solidarity, led the fight for democracy in the 1980s. Non-violent and anti-communist, Solidarity survived government repression to become a major political force. The...

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This document was issued by the First Continental Congress. In response to Parliament’s passage of the Coercive Acts, 12 of the 13 colonies sent delegates to a meeting...