General Resources
- American MemoryAmerican Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. It is a digital record of American history and creativity. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.
- American Periodical Series Online 1740-1940 This link opens in a new windowOver 1,100 periodicals that first began publishing between 1740 and 1900, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines, and many other historically significant periodicals. Coverage 1740-1940.
- Digital Public Library of AmericaThe Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science.
- Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new windowSourced from leading collections at major libraries around the world, this resource tracks the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth.
- Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960 to 1974 This link opens in a new windowThe Sixties brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. With 150,000 pages of material at completion, this searchable collection is the definitive electronic resource for students and scholars researching this important period in American history, culture, and politics. The database currently has over 34,000 pages.
Slavery & Abolition
- Black Abolitionist Papers This link opens in a new windowThis collection searches a unique set of primary sources from African Americans actively involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865.
- HeinOnline Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law This link opens in a new windowThis HeinOnline collection brings together, for the first time, all essential legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
- Slavery & Anti-Slavery, A Transnational Archive This link opens in a new windowIn addition to the standard primary sources one would expect—newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, for example—SAS includes a broad selection of documents from several different archives.
Includes Parts I-IV. - Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new windowThis digital collection documents key aspects of the history of slavery worldwide over six centuries. Topics covered include the African Coast, the Middle Passage, the varieties of slave experience, religion, revolts, abolition, and legislation. The collection also includes case studies from America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Cuba.
- Slavery and the Law (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new windowIncludes race, slavery, and free blacks petitions to southern legislatures and southern county courts as well as State slavery statutes.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowA set of learning modules in the form of mini-monographs, each of which is organized around a specific question about a single social movement. Each module contains fifteen to twenty documents that address the question.
Civil Rights
- American Race Relations: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996 This link opens in a new windowCovers foreign reactions to America’s struggles with racial justice, from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights movement and beyond. Provides a wealth of primary source documents on African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and Native American history
- Black Freedom Struggle (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new windowThe first Black Freedom module of the ProQuest History Vault consists of 37 collections from the records of federal government agencies, covering The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children, who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history.
- Black Thought and Culture: African Americans from Colonial Times to the Present This link opens in a new windowBlack Thought and Culture is a single source for the published works of numerous historically important black leaders. Along with well-known works, the collection features approximately 5,000 pages of unique, fugitive, and never-before-published materials. When complete, Black Thought and Culture will provide approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to 1975. Black teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other leaders form the mainstay of this corpus. The collection is intended for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art.
- Chicano Database This link opens in a new windowRECOMMEND USING CHROME; A comprehensive bibliographic index for all types of material about Mexican-Americans. Extensive coverage from the 1960s to the present, with selective coverage dating back to the early 1900s. Records added since 1992 have expanded its scope to include the broader Latino experience, including Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants.
- Race Relations in America This link opens in a new windowDocumenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowA set of learning modules in the form of mini-monographs, each of which is organized around a specific question about a single social movement. Each module contains fifteen to twenty documents that address the question.
Labor Resources
- Bracero History ArchiveThe Bracero History Archive collects and 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 states in America.
- Farmworker Movement Documentation ProjectPrimary source accounts by the UFW volunteers who built the movement
- Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & ArchivesThe Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives was founded in 1949 as the Labor-Management Documentation Center. Its continuing purpose is the preservation of original source materials relevant to the history of American labor unions, management theory as it applies to labor and industrial relations, and the history of employees at the workplace.
- Southern Labor ArchiveGeorgia State University’s Southern Labor Archives, established in 1971, is dedicated to collecting, preserving and making available the documentary heritage of Southern workers and their unions, as well as that of workers and unions having an historic relationship to the region.
- United State Department of Labor Digital LibraryThe collection includes: U.S. Department of Labor publications, trade union and labor history materials, labor leaders’ biographies, statistical abstracts and more.
- University of Maryland AFL-CIO ArchiveThe University of Maryland is the official repository for records of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), selected records of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and the merged American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowA set of learning modules in the form of mini-monographs, each of which is organized around a specific question about a single social movement. Each module contains fifteen to twenty documents that address the question.
Women's Rights
- Everyday Life & Women in America This link opens in a new windowThis digital collection provides access to rare primary source material on American social, cultural, and popular history from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History, Duke University and The New York Public Library. It comprises thousands of fully searchable images (alongside transcriptions) of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes, emphasizing conduct of life and domestic management literature, the daily lives of women and men, and contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
- Gerritsen Collection: Women's History Online, 1543-1945 This link opens in a new windowThe Gerritsen Collection was begun by Aletta Jacobs Gerritsen in the late 1800s. The online resource delivers two million page images exactly as they appeared in the original printed works. It includes monographs, periodicals and pamphlets in fifteen languages, and is searchable by keyword and Boolean operators.
- Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990 This link opens in a new windowAs the movement for women’s suffrage in America was accelerating, the National Woman’s Party (NWP) brought to the campaign a new militancy and daring. Originally a committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), the NWP was founded in 1913 when Alice Paul and her colleagues broke away from NAWSA in dissent over strategy and tactics.
- Women and Social Movements, International— 1840 to Present This link opens in a new windowOnline archive of published and manuscript primary sources focusing on women’s international activism since the mid-nineteenth century. The archive includes proceedings of women’s international conferences, books, pamphlets, articles from newspapers and journals, as well as correspondence, diary entries, and memoirs. Also contains numerous online publications of contemporary Non-Governmental Organizations.
- Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820 This link opens in a new windowExplores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women’s voices. Includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowA set of learning modules in the form of mini-monographs, each of which is organized around a specific question about a single social movement. Each module contains fifteen to twenty documents that address the question.
LGBTQ+
- Archives of Sexuality and Gender This link opens in a new windowOur subscription includes LGBTQ History parts I and II. This resource Illuminates the experiences not just of the LGBTQ community as a whole, but of individuals of different races, ethnicities, ages, religions, political orientations, and geographical locations that constitute this community. Features historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals, as well as publications by and for lesbians and gays, and extensive coverage of governmental responses to the AIDS crisis. Includes gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health, including the worldwide impact of AIDS, materials tracing LGBTQ activism in Britain from 1950 through 1980, and more. Documents span from 1940 to 2014, with the bulk from 1950 to 1990.
- LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new windowLGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day.
- LGBT Studies in Video This link opens in a new windowLGBT Studies in Video is a cinematic survey of the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as well as the cultural and political evolution of the LGBT community. It features award-winning documentaries, interviews, archival footage, and select feature films exploring LGBT history, gay culture and subcultures, civil rights, marriage equality, LGBT families, AIDS, transgender issues, religious perspectives on homosexuality, global comparative experiences, and other topics.
- Digital Transgender ArchiveThe purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts at the College of the Holy Cross, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than twenty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, and private collections. By digitally localizing a wide range of trans-related materials, the DTA expands access to trans history for academics and independent researchers alike in order to foster education and dialog concerning trans history.
- The LGBTQ+ Politics and Political Candidates Web ArchiveThe LGBTQ+ Politics and Political Candidates Web Archive captures digital content related to LBGTQ+ political candidates and political issues and topics at various levels of government, with a focus on lesser-known local and state politics. This archive preserves a representative sample of what is being called "The Rainbow Wave," which refers to the previously unprecedented number of LGBTQ+ identified candidates openly running for office. These websites provide a record of individuals attempting historic firsts in American politics. In many cases, these individuals are or are attempting to become the first LGBTQ+ identified candidate to run for or hold the office being sought. In addition, as LGBTQ+ political issues are evolving rapidly, a representative sample of LGBTQ+ political and legal organizations, media, and rhetoric are likewise included here.
- ONE National Gay and Lesbian ArchivesONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives is the oldest active Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning (LGBTQ) organization in the United States and the largest repository of LGBTQ materials in the world. Founded in 1952, ONE Archives currently houses over two million archival items including periodicals, books, film, video and audio recordings, photographs, artworks, organizational records and personal papers.
A small subset of this material has been digitized and is available online.
- Sex and Sexuality This link opens in a new windowThis collection explores changing attitudes towards human sexuality, gender identities and sexual behaviors throughout the twentieth century. Investigate the breadth and complexity of human sexual understanding through the work of leading American sexologists, sex researchers, organizations and the public consciousness.
- Transgender Archives - University of VictoriaThe Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria is unparalleled anywhere in the world. Our collections reflect the records of over 50 years of activism by and for trans and gender nonconforming people and over 100 years of research by and about trans and gender nonconforming people.