we had been taught in school that we were a nation under law and the loss of segregation was wrong. now we waited to see if our laws had meaning. or were just words in a book or idle talk in a classroom. >> company halt. >> on september 20 7, 1957 president eisenhower sent 1000 men of the united states army to carry out the law. the supreme court of the united states had said the entire strength of the nation may be used to enforce in any part of the land the security of all rights entrusted iv constitution -- by the constitution. that included my rights and the rights of eight other negro americans who wanted to go to central high school in little rock arkansas.

we were going to school again. > keep track of the republican-led congress and follow its new members through its first session. new congress, best access on c-span. >> between, american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places to learn what artifacts reveal about american history. clara barton, called "the angel of the battlefield" during the civil war, founded the red cross in 1881. she moved the headquarters to

his house -- the house in maryland just outside of washington d.c., stockpiled supplies, volunteers, and ready cash, workers could begin relief efforts immediately in crisis. >> welcome to clara barton national historic site. we are going to see a big house of 38 rooms and 14,000 square feet. as we walked to through the house we will get to know a lady , who lived here a little more than 100 years ago. this was clara barton's home for the last 15 years of her long life. she lived to be 90 years old. this was the first permanent home of the organization she founded and led, the american red cross. right now, we are in a hallway that has paneled walls. as you look at the walls, you

start to find doors. door after door can open up and reveal things to cook soup with and an things to make soup with, serve food with. there are tents and blankets blankets bandages. things to wash clothing with. under one roof in this house they had the people ready to go. the volunteers lived here and had supplies on hand. they had the money. there is a walk-in vault in the corner of this building where they had $3000 ready to start a relief effort. if they learned of a hurricane on a sunday and the bank was closed, they did not have to wait for the bank. they could open the doors, load wagons, go to trains. they could go wherever it was they were going. before we see more of this house and talk more of the lady who lived here, we will first talk for a minute about the town and how clara barton came to live in

glen echo, maryland. glen echo was founded by twin brothers. before founding glen echo, the brothers had been in ventures of culinary devices. they invented in eggbeater mounted to the wall. they sold their patent for the invention and made a fortune. with that money, they bought land. in 1888, they bought 516 acres of land here and named it glen at go. their idea was that it could be a vacation retreat for people that lived in washington city during the year and wanted to get away from the city in the summer. you could enjoy the woods, they were lovely. the potomac river is down the hill from this house today. once these brothers built glen

echo and invested so much in creating this destination they advertised in magazines, in newspapers. in all the ways they could think of, they tried to bring attention to this new place on the map. they thought of famous people that might come here and bring prestige and bring notice. clara barton was famous for her civil war work of 30 years before this. she was known as the angel of the battlefield and she was known for leading a young american red cross. the gentlemaen approached her and offered to give her this land for free and to build her a building for free if she would come to glen echo and make this a center for her organization. it was an attractive opportunity to have a big building that would serve the american red cross. it was what she was looking for. the trolley would be very convenient. she would save yes to these brothers.

yes, she would come to glen and go. but she would have to say a little bit more than yes. she would have to tell the brothers what kind of building she wanted. this is an unusual house. why did she choose it, and where did she get it? johnstown, pennsylvania, is the answer. johnstown below a lake for years. the lake was a place people enjoyed. they vacationed around it. they held that water with an earthen dam. the dam was poorly maintained for years. after days of heavy rain, after warnings about the dam, it broke on may 31, 1889. this johnstown flood killed more than 2000 people. it left thousands more affected. this young, unproven at the time, american red cross went to johnstown and stayed there for

months helping these people survive and recover. you can notice from this image one thing people needed was shelter. the american red cross took tents and would also build shelters. six red cross buildings were put up in a matter of weeks. a center hall like this could be a dining hall for a lot of people. a workroom and a playroom surrounded by bedrooms for the people of johnstown. and it worked. it was a good design for those buildings. clara barton was proud of those houses and the work they did in johnstown, and she thought the same design would serve her well in glen echo. she asked her new friends to build a johnstown house and they did. they built this building.

they put it up they did not , finish it. the brothers did not put up the railings and they did not cover the ceilings. they did not panel the walls or put in plumbing. the brothers did not do that work because they had trouble with their trolley. they could not get the streetcar to come all the way to glen echo like they wanted to. clara barton made the decision that she could not live here without the trolley. she needed the mail delivered every day. she needed good access into washington. the roads between here and washington were not dependable. she chose to use this as a warehouse until the streetcar did arrive. for six years, this was a barn full of boxes. this was just a rough holding. -- rough building. finally, the trolley arrived in front of this building and when it did, clara barton wanted to make this place livable. she had to do that. she had to change this from a barn to a home and she did not want to spend a lot of money

that had been donated for hurricane efforts. it was ms. barton's money that made this place livable. she tried to do that work with a careful eye on spending. she was very frugal, she was from new england. she got materials on sale and building materials for free. one thing she had a lot of was cotton. they bought big rolels of this cotton muslin and they cut it into strips for bandages. this material is what she used to cover the ceilings. most of the walls in this house are bandaged because the plaster for 38 rooms would have cost a great deal of money. this house reveals that ms. barton was frugal and

resourceful and creative. it reflects her dedication. this was her home and the center of the american red cross. for seven years. clara barton was born on christmas day in massachusetts. she was born in north oxford massachusetts, 15 miles west of boston. her birthplace is still there. it is a little white house. it was on a farm when she was a girl. her father was a middle-class farmer. before being a farmer, he had been a soldier and had risen to the rank of captain. captain barton. her father was active in local government and served on the legislature. the barton family helped the poor in the community when she was a girl, so she had exposure to service in her family and experience with service at a young age. clara barton had two brothers, two sisters, and they were all much older than she was, more than 10 years older.

her brothers and sisters were teachers. three out of four of them were professional teachers, public servants in their own right. that is what clara barton became. at 17, she started to teach school. she had to overcome this very shy nature she had to be able to teach a room full of kids. she did that. she went on to enjoy that work and would earn a reputation as being a good teacher teaching in a number of schools around massachusetts by the time she was nearing 30. she is 30 years old, the earliest picture that we have. she found new jersey did not have a system of free schools , and she approached officials of the town and offered to start one herself. they found a building that would be suitable. with six kids, the school

opened, and it quickly grew to 20 by the end of the week. as the school group, the town invested in the school and would build a bigger building the next year and hire a principal. they did not choose ms. barton. they hired a man to be principal and paid her more than twice the amount they paid her. she would go on to washington. she lived in our nation's capital as the civil war began. as the war began and the soldiers from massachusetts came to washington, they were traveling through baltimore when they were attacked by baltimore ians who sympathized with the confederacy. the massachusetts men went on the train and came to washington. it was chaotic in the city. clara barton heard of these riots and wanted to meet the men of massachusetts to see if there was anything she could do. she did begin to help them. she got things for them and helped to set up space for them to stay.

as she worked, she found she knew some of those men. about 40 of them she had known from her time in massachusetts. she had taught some of them in school. she knew some as neighbors. they are much older men who can write home and ask families to send things and could receive supplies to put them to use. she would go on to put ads in newspapers in massachusetts and asked people to send her supplies. mary norton, her friend from college, gathered things from ladies in new jersey who wanted to support the troops. in that way, her apartment was filled with supplies. she would fill another apartment and would go on to fill three warehouses full of supplies. they would take those things into the battlefield. here we find clara barton at the end of the war, in her mid-40's. she had become the angel of the battlefield. that is a famous matthew brady picture.

as the war drew to an end, she worked to locate missing soldiers. she ran an office in washington that would track down what became of so many missing sons and husbands to. she would take to the lecture circuit and thrill audiences with stories of her experience. that lecturing made her a good deal of money and made her famous. and it contributed to her growing fatigue. years of war and work had taken a toll on her health. her medical doctor was urging her to vacation. in switzerland, she learned of the red cross and the geneva convention that had just created the red cross to be neutral during a war to be helpful to , everyone involved in the war. while she was in europe, the franco-prussian war broke out. she volunteered for the german red cross during that war. before coming home to america,

with the idea that there could be an american red cross. she would have to work for years to realize that idea before forming an american red cross in 1881. we are standing in the room that was her office. she sat right here on this chair. in front of the chair, there was a foot warmer that could be filled with hot coals from the stove. on one side of her desk, there is a stapler. next to it, a fragment of a cannonball that she used as a paperweight. something she could have picked up on the civil war battlefield. all sorts of other interesting things are here on this desk. on one side of her office, we find a dining room for the volunteers that worked and lived here with her. 6-12 volunteers that work -- that were ordinarily here.

this table was miss barton's table. this is her blue willow china. the painting of her cat is an original piece. about a third of what we see in this building was ms. barton's. other things we find are similar to what she had. on the other side of her office, we find an office for the volunteers that work with her and wrote reports of work they had done. when they came back from cuba, they wrote of that effort. they wrote letters and letters in that office. every desk in the room has a typewriter. they used ink that did not try right away on purpose. when the letter was done, you could take the letter out of the typewriter and put it on the letterpress. you put tissue on top and pressed it. the ink went to the tissues and you had copies, three or four copies of a letter you were going to mail. there is a telephone on the

right of the room. a very useful device for this group of people. a graph of phone recorded the voice and played back the voice recordings for dictating reports and other things. these two rooms for the national headquarters for the american red cross between 1897 and 1904. today if you went downtown and saw the white house, you would find a big marble building for the red cross. that has been the national headquarters since 1917. it is a real contrast to this much smaller space and smaller organization she was leading. dr. julian hubble was clara the chief field agent for the american red cross for 23 years. he was clara barton's right hand man. he was a medical doctor. that was important to the

organization's work. he also studied architecture and played a part in design the building and the buildings in johnstown. he could sit down in this room and enjoy it as a living room. it is the rear parlor. it a place the lash it is a place where other volunteers could tell stories about adventures. dr. hubble would talk about going to cuba and helping more orphans. entertaining things on the table, a deck of cards. this is something you could look through and see three-dimensional pictures of niagara falls or paris. this front parlor was for people that visited the house. more than for those who lived here. the front parlor was a nice , presentable space. here we find plaster on the ceilings and walls instead of bandage. some of the nicest furniture in this home is in this room. the piano was clara barton's piano.

she did not play it, but she enjoyed other people who played it. the red settee between the windows was a gift to her. the flower chair she liked a lot. it is a presentable space for guests. this is a volunteer's bedroom, there are many rooms like this. 10 bedrooms on the second floor. this one has a toilet bowl and a bathtub. the house have plumbing, just one bathroom with polling. -- with plumbing. this is clara barton's bedroom. bandage material on the ceilings and walls like many of the rooms in this house. this room has windows that gave her a great view of the sunset and the potomac river. the canal was operating just below the back of the building while she was here. glenn echo park next-door was an amusement park in her last years here. this walnut bed was clara

barton's bed. there is a crazy quilt on it today. there is a writing table. clara barton kept a diary from the time she was 13 until she was 90. she wrote thousands of letters and a number of books. the library of congress holds most of those writings today. next to her bedroom is her sitting room, connected through those yellow doors. this was a place for her to write and read and have tea and visit with friends and tell stories. it has recently been restored to look as it did when she was here. clara barton had a nephew, stephen barton liked this room and would visit his aunt often. he worked with the american red cross. he served as vice president for a time. he was like a son to her. there is a man's suit on the

bed. there is a shaving stand for a man next to the window. above the stand, there is a metal plate on the wall that could be pulled away so the stove pipe could be inserted into the chimney. the stove could heat this room in the wintertime. that is true of many rooms in the house. there are six chimneys, there could be a dozen stoves. this is a storage room on the third floor. it is filled with useful and interesting things that could be given away to people that have lost their own things and floods or hurricanes. a wheelchair, a high chair trunks and rugs, tables and chairs. there is a door in the back left corner that goes nowhere. if you were to open the door, it would be straight down to the ground outside. they would use a rope and pulley to lift things up here and lower things into a wagon. the american red cross would give these things to people. people on the street car could see those windows. people on the road would know what this house was about

by the windows and the red cross flag above the windows. we have seen a wooden house that was once the center for an organization, the american red cross, that worked around the world and this country. after 18 major efforts, after 23 years of leading the american red cross, and at the age of 82, clara barton was under pressure to resign. there was another lady to take -- eager to take over. there were people critical of her age, her management style, critical of the rate in which the organization was growing and spreading with more chapters under the the lash around the country. under that pressure, clara barton did step down. the american red cross moved into washington city and clara barton started another organization the next year the , national first aid association. it was the organization that

called first aid first aid and created the first aid kit. it then worked to make it popular teaching people like you , and i to do first aid. clara barton was a famous lady 50 years of her 90-year life. throughout that public life, she was an advocate for women's rights and african-american rights. she worked in various ways to contribute to those movements. clara barton never had the right to vote, but she would work to bring that right to women. clara barton died in her bedroom in this house three days before the titanic sank. april 12 1912. the house after her death would morph into a series of apartments and stay one for decades before becoming a national park. today, there are 401 units of the national park system. this was the first to be dedicated to a woman in 1975.