Finding Primary Sources

Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Race Relations Department and annual Institute of Fisk University, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.

Developed with the guidance of African American librarians and subject specialists, The African American Experience is the widest ranging and easiest-to-use online database collection on African American history and culture.

A website focused on Black Freedom, featuring select primary source documents related to critical people and events in African American history. Our intention is to support a wide range of students (see examples for using in teaching and learning), as well independent researchers and anyone interested in learning more about the foundation of ongoing racial injustice in the U.S. – and the fights against it.

With a range of content focused on political extremism and radical thought in the UK, Europe, Australia and North America, Political Extremism provides a range of documents and audio recordings covering the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The archive will contain over 600,000 pages of content, making it one of the first digital archives on far-right and left political groups.

The liberation of Southern Africa and the dismantling of the Apartheid regime was one of the major political developments of the 20th century, with far-reaching consequences for people throughout Africa and around the globe. This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region.

World Heritage Sites: Africa links visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage sites. The materials in World Heritage Sites: Africa serve researchers in African studies, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art history, Diaspora studies, folklore and literature, geography, and history, as well as those focused on geomatics, advanced visual and spatial technologies, historic preservation, and urban planning. The collection is also a tool for museums, libraries, NGOs, and government organizations that manage or oversee cultural heritage sites, as well as for experts and professionals engaged in the conservation and management of such sites.

Archives of Sexuality and Gender, the largest historical collection available in support the knowledge of gender studies and sexuality education, enables academic scholars to make new connections in LGBTQ history and activism, cultural studies, psychology, health, political science, policy studies, gender history, and other related disciplines of research, including gender studies research.

Explore the impact of invasion and colonization on Indigenous Peoples in North America, and the intersection of Indigenous and European histories and systems of knowledge through the use of manuscripts, monographs, newspapers, photographs, motion pictures, images of artwork, and more. These are the primary sources that take students beyond the facts and figures of history and into a deeper understanding of Indigenous Peoples.

This unique collection documents American History from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century. It is sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the finest archives available for the study of American History.

Module I Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
Module II Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945

Early English Books Online (EEBO) contains page images of every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473–1700.

A preservation repository with millions of volumes digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and HathiTrust’s partner institutions. Approximately one-third of the volumes are in the public domain and can be viewed in their entirety.

LitFinder provides access to literary works and authors throughout history and includes more than 150,000 full-text poems and 800,000+ poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays. The database also includes secondary materials like biographies, images, and more.

A digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction, comprised of books and journals. The library is divided into two distinct, searchable collections: one at Cornell University, and the other at the University of Michigan.

Contains digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials. Access is limited to the following collections: Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century and American Politics and Society.

A collection that will include more than 20,000 pamphlets from 19th Century Britain covering many subject areas. To search the pamphlet collection, enter the JSTOR database, choose "Advanced Search" option, and check the "Pamphlets" box in the "Narrow By" section.

The 19th Century British Newspapers collection contains full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain. This new collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as those from both established country or university towns and the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands, as well as Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Special attention was paid to include newspapers that helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform, Chartism, and Home Rule. The penny papers aimed at the working and clerical classes are also present in the collection.

Searchable database of the archive of this weekly British periodical. Covers 1842 to 2003.

a full-text searchable, facsimile-image database -- provides an as-it-happened window on events, culture, and daily life in nineteenth-century America that is of interest to both professional and general researchers. The collection features publications of all kinds, from the political party newspapers at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the mammoth dailies that shaped the nation at the century's end. Every aspect of society and every region of the nation is found in the archive -- rural and urban, large cities and small towns, and coast to coast. Includes major newspapers as well as those published by African Americans, Native Americans, women's rights groups, labor groups, the Confederacy, and other groups and interests.

Original historical materials and British government documents. Collection includes Part I - The Tudors, 1509-1603: Domestic; and Part III - The Stuarts, 1603-1714: Domestic.

Women’s Magazine Archive 2 features several of the most prominent, high-circulating, and long-running publications in this area, such as Woman’s Day and Town & Country. Collection 2 also, however, complements the first collection by including some titles focusing on more specific audiences and themes. Cosmopolitan and Seventeen, for example, are oriented towards a younger readership, while black women’s interests are represented by Essence. Women’s International Network News differs in being a more political, activist title, with an international dimension.