American History: Primary Sources by Type

Contains more than 1000 cartoons representing more than 50 cartoonists, created primarily in the 1960s and 1970.
The cartoons reflect changes in American social and political attitudes and provide artistic commentary on such topics as the Civil Rights Movement, Watergate, the Vietnam War, government bureaucracy, taxes, and political corruption.

This Library of Congress collection contains close to 500 political cartoons and caricatures made in America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

This Ohio State University Libraries site aims to develop a comprehensive research collection documenting American printed cartoon art. The scope of the collection includes editorial and magazine cartoons, including those by Thomas Nast.

New York advertising executive Erwin Swann (1906-1973) established the Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon in 1967. He was an avid collector, assembling a large group of original drawings by four hundred artists, spanning two centuries. This collection is preserved by the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress.

Clifford H. Baldowski, known by the pen-name "Baldy," depicted the local, national, and international news in the editorial pages of the Augusta Chronicle, Miami Herald, and Atlanta Constitution. His work covers the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, the Vietnam conflict, Middle East tensions, and Watergate. This collection contains approximately 2,600 cartoons.

Dates covered: 1855-1892
One of the most successful pictorial news magazines of the second half of the 19th century. It was launched in December 1855, and, according to his colleague Richard Kimball, Frank Leslie commissioned engravings that were "exact illustrations of the current events of the day."

(From the University of Pittsburgh) Fred Wright was an American labor cartoonist and activist. From 1939 until his death in 1984, Wright created thousands of cartoons reflecting the politics and labor issues, which were featured in newspapers, union publications, and overseas union activism. This Web site focuses specifically on the series of 177 "Labor History" cartoons created by Wright.

Berryman was a political cartoonist for the Washington Post and the Washington Evening Star for the first half of the 20th century. This online exhibit features cartoons that appeared on the front page of Washington papers from 1898 through 1948, and gives a picture of the entire election process.

The New York Public Library offers an extensive collection of titles that shed light on the historical and cultural significance that comic books and graphic novels have had on American culture.
This guide will concentrate on material that is located in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.

Dates covered 1987-present
Records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, totaling over 194,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives.

(from the Museum of the Moving Image) A collection of Presidential Election television campaign commercials from 1952 to 2020.

A collection of oral histories related to US diplomatic history

Includes “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films, many produced by or for U.S. corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions.

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.

(From the U.S. National Library of Medicine) A collection of 18 public health films from the WWII period, including searchable transcripts of the films.

Aims to collect, digitize, and present in streaming video format over the World Wide Web television news footage from the period and to make these valuable materials available to scholars, teachers, and students. The current 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.

Designed to promote the study of great speeches and public debates. The emphasis of the project is on the actual words of those who, throughout American history, have defined the country’s guiding principles, debated the great social and political controversies of the nation’s history, and shaped the identity and character of the American people.

Includes: ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, tintypes, portraits, social and political caricatures, drawings, European political prints, engravings, and photographs

16 collections

Part of the University of Minnesota's Social Welfare History Archives, this site lets you search posters by subject, keyword, and date.

A rich resource for digitized images, documents, videos, sound recordings and more. Currently covers American History topics from the American Revolution to 9/11/2001.

Contains the Alan Lomax Archive, a collection of recorded music, dance, and the spoken word. Alan Lomax was an anthropologist of the performing arts.

This University of California-Berkeley Bancroft Library site provides access to over 30,000 images illustrating California's history and culture

Early Landscape Photography of the American West This New York Public Library site provides access to over 200 prints from the 1860s and 1870s of American Western landscape, plus some text

Over 30,000 photographs, drawn from the holdings of the Western History and Genealogy Department at Denver Public Library.

Presents primary source material from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, "the center of American eugenics research from 1910-1940."

A collection of illustrated magazine advertisements through the internet archive.

Specializing in works by Philadelphia photographers and printmakers, and images that document the city of Philadelphia, the collection visually records the history of the Philadelphia area from the late 17th to the mid 20th century. In addition to Philadelphia area materials, the graphics collections include historical and commemorative prints, portraits, and political cartoons documenting American history at the national level from the 18th through the early 20th century.

Google provides access to Life magazine's millions of photographs, from the 1750s on, most of which were never published.

This collection provided by the University of North Carolina presents images from woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs--most of these were made by people accompanying Union forces, or were made from sketches and other information they provided

Provides access to over 800,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more.

Photographs from the West Virginia and Regional History Collection – Made available by West Virginia University, this site includes thousands of digitized photos.

(from Princeton University) Consists of photographs of Indians of the Americas and views of the American West, including landscapes, cityscapes, and mining, railroad, and agricultural operations. Also included are views of towns in Mexico. The bulk of the photographs date from the 19th century.

Digitized by the University of Oklahoma Libraries. Includes over 250,000 prints and negatives with an emphasis on the periods of 1870-1940.

from the University of Virginia

An historical atlas of the United States that combines research with interactive mapping techniques. Maps include: The Forced Migration of Enslaved People,
1810-1860; Foreign-Born Population,1850-2010; The Overland Trails,1840-1860. More added soon

from the University of Texas at Austin

Developed though collaboration between UCLA and USC, Hypercities is a platform for exploring, learning about, and interacting with the layered histories of city and global spaces. Using Google Maps and Google Earth, users can go back in time to create and explore the historical layers of city spaces in an interactive, hypermedia environment.

This University of Virginia exhibit shows the evolving views of the American continent and the “Passage to the Indies” as they appear in maps up to the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

More than 20,000 maps that can be viewed through the NYPL's Digital Collections page, and downloaded, through the Map Warper. You must first create an account, then click a map title and go

Social Explorer provides access to demographic data and includes tools for visualization. Create maps, charts, and stories using historic and current data on the economy, health, politics, environment, crime and more.

Includes Federal redlining maps along with other documents from the 1930s-40s such as interviews, financial and banking documents, and detailed city surveys from the National Archives.

The WVS in collaboration with EVS (European Values Study) carried out representative national surveys in 97 societies containing almost 90 percent of the world's population from 1981 to 2008. These surveys show changes in what people believe in and what they want out of life in relation to the environment, work, family, politics and society, religion and morale, and national identity.
Use the “Online Data Analysis” option to view findings.

Access the archives of various newspapers published from 1740 to the 21st Century.