American History: Primary Sources by Topic

A collection of resources from the Library of Congress, including: Edward Curtis photographs; Omaha Indian Music; Chicago Daily News photographs; Western US photographs; Native American Culture, Pacific Northwest; and Traveling in American (books, c. 1750-1920)

This Library of Congress collection provides free and open access to a wide range of primary source material documenting American history and culture, including text, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music.

Provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. Collections range from Abigail Franks' letters to her son from the 1730s and 1740s (Center for Jewish History) to Katrina Thomas' photographs of ethnic weddings from the late 20th century.

This Duke University collection documents various aspects of the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States, focusing specifically on the radical origins of this movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Items range from radical theoretical writings to humorous plays to the minutes of an actual grassroots group

Dates covered: 1850-1950
This Cornell University site is an electronic collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines, published between 1850 and 1950 and selected by scholars for their historical importance

Digital collections of interest include oral history collections; The Power of Women's Voices; exhibits on the history of the YWCA; exploring women's history through family papers; and Agents of Social Change: New Resources on 20th-Century Women's Activism

This Fordham University site provides access to key primary source documents related to women's history

This Harvard University Open Collections Program collection explores women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression. Working conditions, workplace regulations, home life, costs of living, commerce, recreation, health and hygiene, and social issues are among the issues documented

A speech bank of over 1800 speeches delivered by women from around the world and throughout the past.

A repository of primary research materials at New York University that aims to increase understanding of the Irish migration experience and the distillation of American Irish ethnicity over the past century.

An online collection of selected historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression. Includes more than 410,000 pages, 100 individually cataloged maps, and 7,800 photographs.

The #SchomburgSyllabus archives Black-authored and Black-related online educational resources to document Black studies, movements, and experiences in the 21st century. In connecting these web-archived resources to the Schomburg Center’s own unique materials, the project honors and recognizes the source and strength of Black self-education practices, collective study, and librarianship. The #SchomburgSyllabus is curated by Schomburg Center staff and organized into 27 themes to foster a greater understanding of the Black experience.

The Black Teacher Archive is a freely available digital portal centralizing materials created by professional organizations of African American educators, historically referred to as Colored Teachers Associations (CTAs). The primary holdings of the portal are 20th century serial publications by CTAs.
The collection makes public the intellectual, political, and cultural contributions of Black educators during the Jim Crow era through the Civil Rights era. The BTA brings together materials from 70 archival repositories across the United States and makes available for research more than 50,000 pages authored by African American educators.

This Pacifica Radio/UC-Berkeley collaboration seeks to gather, catalog, and make accessible primary source media resources related to social activism and activist movements in California in the 1960's and 1970's; it provides links to key resources and sites with primary sources on the Black Panther Party and more

This archive, developed by the University of Michigan Library, contains documents and images concerning Supreme Court cases; busing and school integration efforts in northern urban areas; school integration in the Ann Arbor Public School District; and recent resegregation trends in American schools

Developed by the University of Southern Mississippi Library and partners, this resource provides oral history transcripts and a civil rights timeline.

Thurgood Marshall Law Library, University of Maryland.
Since its inception in 1957, the United States Commission on Civil Rights has been at the forefront of efforts by the Federal Government and state governments to examine and resolve issues related to race, ethnicity, religion and, more recently, sexual orientation.

1910-1970
From the University of Washington. Civil rights movements in Seattle started well before the celebrated struggles in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, and they relied not just on African American activists but also on Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, Latinos, and Native Americans. They also depended upon the support of some elements of the region's labor movement.

This University of Virginia archive contains films from the nightly news from two local television stations in Virginia--WDBJ (CBS) Roanoke and WSLS (NBC) Roanoke. In this initial installment we have digitized over 230 films.

Makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964. Millions of Mexican agricultural workers crossed the border under the program to work in more than half of the U.S. states.

Provides online access to a growing selection of items from the library's collections of images, documents, and publications related to the history of business, technology, and society.

Includes 12 projects that bring together nearly one hundred video oral history interviews and several thousand photographs, documents, and digitized newspaper articles.

The civil rights movements in Seattle started well before the celebrated struggles in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, and they relied not just on African American activists but also on Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, Latinos, and Native Americans. They also depended upon the support of some elements of the region's labor movement. From the 1910s through the 1970s, labor and civil rights were linked in complicated ways, with some unions and radical organizations providing critical support to struggles for racial justice, while others stood in the way.

This Harvard University Open Collections Program collection explores women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression. Working conditions, workplace regulations, home life, costs of living, commerce, recreation, health and hygiene, and social issues are among the issues documented

This archive, developed by Texas Tech University, provides access to over 2.7 million pages of documents, including photographs, slides, negatives, oral histories, artifacts, moving images, sound recordings, maps, and collection finding aids

This University of Washington Library collection provides access to leaflets and newspapers that were distributed on the University of Washington campus during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s

(14 Collections) Presidents covered are: Coolidge, Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, and Washington

Between 1940 and 1973, six American presidents (Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon) secretly recorded just under 5,000 hours of their meetings and telephone conversations. Through a combination of historical research and annotated transcripts the Miller Center at the University of Virginia has made these tapes accessible to the public.

Contains material that was compiled and published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration. It includes volumes covering the administrations of Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. As subsequent volumes are published, they will be added online.

Searchable full-text edition of the 1953 publication, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Includes speeches, correspondence, and more, compiled by the Abraham Lincoln Association.

Provides access to her writings, including columns, correspondence, articles, speeches, and more.

This institution, part of the National Archives and Records Administration, provides a gateway to many resources about FDR, the New Deal, and more.

This Harpweek site compiles over 200 excerpts from Harper's Weekly concerning the 1868 Johnson impeachment.

This Northern Illinois University site presents primary source materials from Lincoln's Illinois years (1830-1861) and other resources for study of antebellum Illinois

The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799 - posted by the University of Virginia E-Text Center

Divided into 4 categories, the interviews, conducted by the Office of the House Historian, discuss the people, events, institutions, and objects of the ever-evolving House of Representatives.

Contains digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government.

This archive, developed by the University of Michigan Library, contains documents and images concerning Supreme Court cases; busing and school integration efforts in northern urban areas; school integration in the Ann Arbor Public School District; and recent resegregation trends in American schools

1846-1855
The records displayed in this exhibit document the Scotts' early struggle to gain their freedom through litigation and are the only extant records of this significant case as it was heard in the St. Louis Circuit Court. The original Dred Scott case file is located in the Office of the St. Louis Circuit Clerk.

This collection is an expanded and updated version of the original Dred Scott Case Collection. The collection, was expanded from eighty-five to one hundred and eleven documents, over 400 pages of text. In addition, the collection is now a full-text, searchable resource that represents the full case history of the Dred Scott Case.

Compiled by Douglas O. Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, this resource provides primary source and other materials concerning some of the 20th Century's key trials.

Explores multigenerational black, white, and mixed family networks in early Washington, D.C., by collecting, digitizing, making accessible, and analyzing thousands of case files from the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court

A multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States, its justices, and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955.

Library of Congress, American Memory Project.
Contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States. The documents, most from the Law Library and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, comprise an assortment of trials and cases, reports, arguments, accounts, examinations of cases and decisions, proceedings, journals, a letter, and other works of historical importance.

From Bowling Green State University