HIS 202: American History 1865 to the Present: Web Sites

A list of digital collections focusing on American history. Contents includes photograph, movie, audio, and text collections.

The valley project details life in two American communities, on Northern and one Southern, fro the time of John Browns Raid through the Era of Reconstruction.

A listing of African American related web sites compiled by the University Libraries at the University of Washington.

The King Center archive contains nearly a million documents associated with the life of Martin Luther King Jr., including speeches, telegrams, scribbled notes, patient admonitions and urgent pleas.

The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries.

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, located in Harlem, New York, recently digitized Victor Green’s entire collection of The Negro Motorist Green Book, which kept African Americans from harm along the highways and byways of Jim Crow America. From 1936 to 1966 (with only a pause for WWII), Green published the directories known today as the Green Book. (The actual titles were variously: The Negro Motorist Green Book; The Negro Travelers’ Green Book; The Travelers’ Green Book). These listed—first in NYC only, later throughout much of the world—hotels, restaurants, beauty salons, nightclubs, bars, gas stations, etc. where black travelers would be welcome.

This digital collection includes twenty issues of newspapers published by the Black Americans for Democracy (BAD), a student organization founded in the late 1960s. Active at the University of Arkansas during most of the 1970s, BAD published the newspaper between 1971 and 1977 under three different titles: The BAD Times, Black Americans for Democracy News, and Times (Black Americans for Democracy).

The Wisconsin Historical Society has one of the richest collections of Civil Rights movement records in the nation, which includes more than 100 manuscript collections documenting the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964. More than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts are available online.

Overview of materials in the Library of Congress about the African American experience covering the nearly 500 years of the black experience in the Western hemisphere. Includes books, periodicals, prints, photographs, music, film, and recorded sound.

A list of guides for online archival collections from the Special Collections Library at Duke University.

Digital Schomburg at the New York Public Library.

From Project Avalon at Yale University Law School.

American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

Ever-expanding Historical Collections from the National Digital Library, are taken from the Library of Congress special collections and consist of primary source and archival materials relating to US history and culture. [Reviewed] 

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Fede

This resource comprises 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920.

During the late 1930s writers of the Works Progress Administration, interviewed thousands of former slaves throughout the American south. This Web site offers annotated transcripts of selected interviews with commentary on their research value and explana

Over 981 books and manuscripts on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. Organized into the the following projects:

Documents the individual and collective story of the African American struggle for freedom and human rights. Will eventually contain all the narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in English up to 1920.

An ongoing digital library of primary sources in US social history (1850-77) created in cooperation with Cornell University and supported by the Mellon Foundation. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints.

Keeper of United States historical documents and records.

Contains legal, diplomacy and history in various subjects

Selections of documents and images from New England illustrating the American home front during the Second World War

A collection of digitized primary sources from the second world war covering civil defense, rationing, economics, African Americans, Japanese internment and the War Relocation Authority, women, and children

Housed at the Philadelphia Museum of History, this collection includes materials highlighting the history of cultural diversity in the Philadelphia region.

This collection contains papers and records of individuals and organizations, reflecting the peace movement in the United States and globally. Materials span the early 19th century through the present. Prominent is the role of women in the movement.

Established in 1967, Temple University’s Urban Archives document the social, economic, political, and physical development of the greater Philadelphia region throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Information on collections housed at the National Archives Philadelphia branch, information on visiting the branch, and information for researchers.

The images contained in this digital collection document Philadelphia’s past through its neighborhoods, buildings, and events. They are drawn from the Philadelphiana Collection, which contains over 20,000 historical images of Philadelphia. The earliest photograph in the collection dates back to 1841; most are from the latter half of the 19th century, with a few from the early 20th century. These images represent a small fraction of the photographs, drawings, paintings, and ephemera Philadelphiana has to offer.

United States census data sets dating back to 1790.

Catalog containing the materials collected at the Library Company of Philadelphia and other libraries. Materials include rare books, broadsides, pamphlets, wood cuts, lithographs, and maps.

A listing of digitized photography collections including images from the 19th through 21st centuries.

Archives and digital collections covering Philadelphia history.

Digitized collections and finding aids for physical records at the New York City Municipal Archives.

Search for digitized copies of historical print works available from dozens of research universities and college collections.

NASA archive on women in the space program.

Contains digitized editions of several dozen regional California newspapers, dating back to the 1850's.

A collection of local and regional Illinois newspapers dating to the 1840's.

A collection of several regional/local Kentucky newspapers with coverage dating back to the 1850's.

A searchable list of digitized historic newspapers from across the United States. This collection includes publications dating back to the 1780's.

A collection of New York regional newspapers. You can browse by county or by title, with content dating to the mid 1800's.

A collection of indexes and digitized copies of prominent Missouri newspapers dating to the 1850's.

A digital collection from Middle Tennessee State University focused on primary source material related to American Women's History through the 1970's.

Resources beneficial to the study of American Women's History provided by the National Archives.

The National First Ladies' Library provides primary source materials, photographs, and bibliographies for further study.

Highlights the lives and careers of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, providing topical pages, photographs, and digitized document collections.

To see selected correspondence for Eleanor, please click
here, and select the appropriate collection from the list of resources.

A digitized collection of documents and resources from the life and public career of Eleanor Roosevelt, from George Washington University.

Research guides and digitized collections from the presidency and lives of JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
To view the Jacqueline Kennedy digitized personal papers collection, please click here .

Digital collections from the lives and presidency of LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson.