Modern American History Digital Library - Historical Documents, Maps, Photos, Exhibits, & Archives

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Digital Library > History > U.S. > Modern America

See also

49th Parallel (electronic journal)
An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies
"...quarterly electronic journal which aims to promote interdisciplinary study of the North American continent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
- Published by the University of Birmingham (UK) - Dept. of American and Canadian Studies

Aaron Copland Collection
"The multiformat Aaron Copland Collection from which the online collection derives spans the years 1910 to 1990 and includes approximately 400,000 items documenting the multifaceted life of an extraordinary person who was composer, performer, teacher, writer, conductor, commentator, and administrator. It comprises both manuscript and printed music, personal and business correspondence, diaries, writings, scrapbooks, programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, awards, books, sound recordings, and motion pictures."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

African American Perspectives
Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murrary Collection, 1818-1907
"...presents a panoramic and eclectic review of African-American history and culture, spanning almost one hundred years from the early nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, with the bulk of the material published between 1875 and 1900. Among the authors represented are Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Benjamin W. Arnett, Alexander Crummel, and Emanuel Love."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

The Alger Hiss Story
"This Web site recreates one of the most important legal cases in this country's history, often cited as a turning point in 20th century American thinking ... to be an authoritative portal for access to primary information about Alger Hiss, the Hiss case and the early Cold War years - including new scholarship, newly released official documents from various governments and government agencies, and the archival material, such as trial testimony, court and government records and commentary, collected in many libraries and online repositories ... to act as the digitized and online counterpart to the Alger Hiss Papers at the Harvard Law School Library. Acting in tandem with the Harvard collection, this Web site will post a complete summary of the charges against Alger Hiss and a comprehensive look at the case for the defense..."
Jeff Kisseloff, Managing Editor ["who worked with Alger Hiss to help prepare his coram nobis petition..."]

America at Work / America at Leisure, 1894-1915
"Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of 150 motion pictures, 88 of which are digitized for the first time (62 are also available in other American Memory presentations). Highlights include films of the United States Postal Service from 1903, cattle breeding, fire fighters, ice manufacturing, logging, calisthenic and gymnastic exercises in schools, amusement parks, boxing, expositions, football, parades, swimming, and other sporting events."
American Memory, Library of Congress

America From the Great Depression to World War II
Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945
"This release provides access to nearly 45,000 of these images; future additions will expand the black-and-white offering." Also includes about 1600 color photos
American Memory, Library of Congress

American Environmental Photographs, 1891-1936 - (dead link)
"This collection consists of approximately 4,500 photographs documenting natural environments, ecologies, and plant communities in the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Produced between 1891 and 1936 by a group of American botanists generally regarded as one of the most influential in the development of modern ecological studies, these photographs provide an overview of important representative natural landscapes across the nation. They demonstrate the character of a wide range of American topography, its forestation, aridity, shifting coastal dune complexes, and watercourses."
Images from the University of Chicago Library
American Memory, Library of Congress

The American Experience
PBS Online

American Family Immigration History Center
Explore Your Family History at Ellis Island
Includes: The Ellis Island Archives ; The Passenger Record Archive ; The Community Archive ; Family History Scrapbooks.

American Leaders Speak
Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election
The Nation's Forum Collection
"...consists of fifty-nine sound recordings of speeches by American leaders at the turn of the century. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding the First World War and the subsequent presidential election of 1920. Speakers include: Warren G. Harding, James Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John J. Pershing. Speeches range from one to five minutes."
American Memory, Library of Congress

American Museum of the Moving Image

Atlantic Monthly

Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America
Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner, 1935-1955
"The Gottscho-Schleisner Collection is comprised of over 29,000 images primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures. Subjects are concentrated chiefly in the northeastern United States, especially the New York City area, and Florida. Included are the homes of notable Americans, such as Raymond Loewy, and of several U.S. presidents, as well as color images of the 1939-40 New York World's Fair."
American Memory, Library of Congress

Aviation Nose Art and Pin-Ups
Sections include Pin-Up Influence ; Modern Nose Art ; Historic Nose Art ; Don Allen Gallery
From Historic Wings

The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 - (dead link)
A University of Arizona Library Web Exhibit
"The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 was an event specific to Arizona that influenced the labor movement throughout the United States. What started as a labor dispute between copper mining companies and their workers turned into vigilante action against the allegedly nefarious activities of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). This site is a research-based collection of primary and secondary sources for the study of the deportation of over 1,000 striking miners from Bisbee on 12 July, 1917...Materials include I.W.W. publications, personal recollections, newspaper articles, court records, government reports, correspondence, and journal articles that are part of the collections of three libraries: The University of Arizona Library, the Arizona Historical Society, Tucson, Arizona, and the Sharlot Hall Museum, Prescott, Arizona.

Booker T. Washington Papers Online
"...is a completely free and searchable web site designed to provide researchers worldwide with full access to the thousands of pages comprising this 14-volume printed work, originally published by the University of Illinois Press.
The History Cooperative

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 Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves. This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs from the Prints and Photographs Division that are now made available to the public for the first time."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Brown University Library Digital Collections

  • African American Sheet Music 1820-1920
    "This collection consists of over 1400 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1820 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period."

Brown v. Board of Education - see our separate Brown v. Board of Education page.

Built in America
Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present
"The collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types and engineering technologies including examples as diverse as windmills, one-room schoolhouses, the Golden Gate Bridge, and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright."
American Memory, Library of Congress

By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
"...consists of 907 boldly colored and graphically diverse original posters produced from 1936 to 1943 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Of the 2,000 WPA posters known to exist, the Library of Congress's collection of more than 900 is the largest. These striking silkscreen, lithograph, and woodcut posters were designed to publicize health and safety programs; cultural programs including art exhibitions, theatrical, and musical performances; travel and tourism; educational programs; and community activities in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The posters were made possible by one of the first U.S. Government programs to support the arts and were added to the Library's holdings in the 1940s."
American Memory, Library of Congress

C-Span American Writers II: The 20th Century (2002)
View each episode online.
"C-Span brings together writers, scholars, historians and actors to examine the lives and work of selected Twentieth Century American Writers who have influenced our nation's history."
Sections include: Progressive Era & Reaction ; Depression & War ; Early Cold War ; Social Transformation to Vietnam

Camp Harmony Exhibit
"This exhibit tells the story of Seattle's Japanese American community in the spring and summer of 1942 and their four month sojourn at the Puyallup Assembly Center known as "Camp Harmony."
University of Washington Libraries

Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs - (dead link) An exciting and emotional exhibit form the Newseum

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

  • Documenting History: Teenie Harris Archive
    "Numbering upwards of 80,000 images, this archive represents the largest single collection of photographic images of any Black community in the United States-or the world for that matter."

Cases & Materials on American Federalism - (dead link)
"...used in American Government Courses at Purdue University Calumet. The site contains historical documents [American, British, and English], a timeline, a glossary, edited court cases, review questions, other materials, and links to other free resources."
Online textbook by Douglas G. Amber, Dept. of History & Political Science, Purdue University

Censored: Wielding the Red Pen
"This exhibition hopes not so much to judge censors and censorship but instead to provoke questions."
Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

  • Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States, 1940-99 [.pdf] - (dead link)

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Chile: 16,000 Secret U.S. Documents Declassified
"The release, totaling over 50,000 pages of State Department, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records, represents the fourth and final ìtrancheî of the Clinton Administrationís special Chile Declassification Project ... The declassification includes 700 controversial CIA documents that the Directorate of Operations had refused to releaseórecords of U.S. covert operations between 1968 and 1975 to destabilize the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and, after the violent 1973 coup, to bolster the military regime of Augusto Pinochet."
See also NSA's Chile Documentation Project - (dead link).
- National Security Archive

Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
"The 'Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive' project will result in the creation of an Internet-accessible, fully searchable database of digitized versions of rare and unique library and archival resources on race relations in Mississippi...For the first phase of the project, USM Libraries is cooperating with the USM Center for Oral History to offer 125 oral history transcripts on the civil rights movement, such as those by civil rights leaders Charles Cobb, Charles Evers, Aaron Henry, and Hollis Watkins. This collection also includes oral histories of race-baiting governor Ross Barnett, national White Citizens Council leader William J. Simmons, and State Sovereignty head Erle Johnston."
McCain Library & Archives, University of Southern Mississippi

*see our African American History - Civil Rights Movement*

Cold War - See our separate Cold War History page.

Common-Place: Special Issue on the Constitution
Vol. 2, No. 4, July 2002
Roundtable Discussion: The Uses & Abuses of the Constitution
"In eight paired essays, historians, political scientists, journalists, and lawyers examine the uses and abuses of the Constitution in contemporary American political affairs, from Bush v. Gore to the The Clinton Impeachment."
Sections include: Electoral College ; The Clinton Impeachment ; The Second Amendment ; Women and the Constitution.

Conscience and the Constitution
"In World War II, a handful of young Americans refused to be drafted from an American concentration camp. They were ready to fight for their country, but not before the government restored their rights as U.S. citizens and released their families from camp. It was a classic example of civil disobedience -- but the government prosecuted them as criminals and Japanese American leaders and veterans ostracized them as traitors. CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION delves into the heart of the Japanese American conscience and a controversy that continues today. Experience the choice faced by any group when confronted by mass injustice -- whether to comply or to resist."
PBS Online

Cornell University Library - Rare & Manuscript Collections

  • From Domesticity to Modernity: What Was Home Economics?
    "In celebration of the New York State College of Human Ecology's Centennial, this exhibition will emphasize how home economics at Cornell University, served as a critical bridge from domesticity in the 19th century to modernity in the 20th century and will attempt to answer the question: What was home economics?"

Crucible of Empire : The Spanish-American War
"...this site offers a timeline of the major events before, during, and after the war; original 1890s sheet music popular during the War; photographs of the major figures involved; newspaper articles and headlines from 1890s newspapers; classroom activities for teachers and students; historical resources, including recent scholarship concerning the war, bibliographies, and links to other web sites..."
PBS Online

The Day After the Day Which Will Live in Infamy - (dead link)
"Man on the Street" Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
"This collection represents interviews with salesmen, electricians, janitors, oilmen, cab drivers, housewives, students, soldiers, and physicians. Young and old, men and women, black and white, long- time residents and recent immigrants are represented in the recordings, expressing their opinions on the social, political, and military aspects of the Pearl Harbor attack."
American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Documents from the Women's Liberation Movement
An On-line Archival Collection
Special Collections Library, Duke University
"...document various aspects of the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States, and focus specifically on the radical origins of this movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Items range from radical theoretical writings to humourous plays to the minutes of an actual grassroots group."
Compiled by Ginny Daley, Women's Studies Archivist and Bibliographer

Douglas - Archives of American Public Address - (dead link)
"Douglass is an electronic archive of American oratory and related documents. It is intended to serve general scholarship and courses in American rhetorical history at Northwestern University."

Dr. Seuss Went to War:
A Catalog of Political Cartoons By Dr. Seuss
400 political cartoons by Theodor Seuss Geisel penned from 1941-1943 in the New York newspaper PM.
Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego

Duke Ellington's Washington
Sections include: Noted Black Washingtonians ; Duke Ellington ; Virtual Tour of Shaw ; Interviews ; Transcript ; Resources "Uptown Interactive" ; DC History ; The Music Scene ; The Documentary ; Urban Renaissance
PBS Online

Election 2000 - An Internet Library - (dead link)
"A publicly accessible repository of digital materials covering the U.S. Presidential Election of 2000."
"The Presidential Election of 2000 was one of the closest and most controversial elections in our Nation's history. This Internet Library was created to preserve this period of our digital history...The collection contains sites gathered from Aug. 1, 2000 to Jan. 14, 2001. You can now travel back in time and view these sites as they appeared during that period."
From Alexa Wayback Machine - Commissioned by the Library of Congress

Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
"...presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture.

Federal Bureau of Investigation - Freedom of Information Act

  • Abbie (Abbott) Hoffman - (dead link)
    "Abbie Hoffman, 1960s and 70s activist and anarchist, was Co-Founder of Youth International Party (YIP a.k.a. Yippies) and one of "Chicago Seven". He was the subject of a security investigation in 1968 in view of his anarchist actions, as well as an anti-riot law investigation as a result of his leadership in disturbances at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (DEMCON) in Chicago. (4,101 pages)
  • Alcatraz Escape (1962)
    1757 pages.
  • John Lennon
    "Investigation conducted when the FBI learned that John Lennon contributed $75,000 to a group planning to disrupt the Republican National Convention in 1972."

Federation of American Scientists - Congress 2002 Intelligence Debate

  • Did the U.S. Help Saddam Acquire Biological Weapons
    Statement of Sen. Byrd, September 20, 2002.
    Read from the Newsweek article from the Sept. 23, 2002 issue regarding the cordial nature of U.S. - Iraqi relations during the early 1980's, including a description of Donald Rumsfeld's visit with Saddam Hussein and how the U.S. sent germs to Iraq.

Fifty Years of Coca-Cola Television Advertisements
Highlights from the Motion Picture Archives
"...presents a variety of television advertisements, never-broadcast outtakes, and experimental footage reflecting the historical development of television advertising for a major commercial product."
American Memory, Library of Congress

First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1740-1920
 "This compilation of printed texts from the libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill documents the culture of the nineteenth-century American South from the viewpoint of Southerners. It includes the diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives of not only prominent individuals, but also of relatively inaccessible populations: women, African Americans, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans. An award from the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition supported the digitization of 101 titles published during and after the Civil War. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill supplemented these titles with another forty first-person narratives, many published before 1740."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Folkstreams - The Best of American Folklore Films
A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures
"Streamed with essays about the traditions and filmmaking. The site includes transcriptions, study and teaching guides, suggested readings, and links to related websites."

Foreign Policy (FP)
Published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

  • Democratic Presidents and U.S. Foreign Policy (March-April 2003)
    "...read some of their most important speeches on U.S. foreign policy."
    Includes: Woodrow Wilson ; Franklin D. Roosevelt ; Harry S. Truman ; John F. Kennedy ; Lyndon B. Johnson ; Jimmy Carter ; William J. Clinton.

 

Foreign Relations of the United States

"...is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian and printed volumes are available from the Government Printing Office."

  • 1900-1918
    From Libraries, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • 1945-
     From Office of the Historian, U.S. State Department
    "This site is no longer updated" - After January 20, 2001

Franklin D. Roosevelt Library & Museum

  • Library & Digital Archives - Research Center
    "This site is designed to provide researchers with on-line access to primary source documents, photographs and other research material. Researchers may also view the indexes and finding aids of the various papers held at the Library, learn more about the Library's sound, film, and video collection, and gain information about Roosevelt Era Collections in other Repositories."
    • - (dead link) On-Line DocumentsOver 10,000 digitized documents available
      "The first batch of PSF documents to be digitized are those 6000 pages kept locked in FDR's White House safe that were known as the Safe Files. We have also digitized those portions of the Diplomatic Files pertaining to U.S.-Vatican relations during World War II, approximately 1,000 pages entitled the Vatican Files, as well as the German Diplomatic Files, which contain over 2,000 documents concerning U.S. relations with Germany in the 1930s and 40s. These 9,000 pages can be viewed in original and text format."

Free Speech Movement: Student Protest - U.C. Berkeley, 1964-65
Sections include: Collections ; Text Documents ; Media Center ; Chronology ; Bibliography.
- University of Berkeley Library

George J. Mitchell Papers
 "This site is dedicated to providing information about, and access to, the papers of George J. Mitchell (Bowdoin 1954), as well as access to related information about American government, politics, and legislation...selected documents, photographs, and sound and video clips are be available at this site."
Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College, Bowdoin College

George Washington University - The National Security Archive
"...an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

  • The Iran-Contra Affair 20 Years On
    Documents Spotlight Role of Reagan, Top Aids
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 210, November 2006.
  • Nixon White House Considered Nuclear Options Against North Vietnam - Nuclear Weapons, the Vietnam War and the "Nuclear Taboo"
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, No. 195.
    Edited by William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, July 2006.
  • Nixon and the FBI: The White House Tapes
    National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 156, June 2005. Edited by Richard A. Moss.
    • The Deep Throat File
      "FBI Memos Detail Mark Felt's Involvement in Efforts to Identify Secret Watergate Source."
  • The September 11th Sourcebooks
    National Security Archive Online Readers on Terrorism, Intelligence and the Next War
    • Volume I: Terrorism and U.S. Policy (September 21, 2001)
      "...contains the documents that our staff experts, led by Dr. Jeffrey Richelson and coordinated by Michael Evans, have selected as the most important available primary sources on U.S. terrorism policy."
    • Volume II: Afghanistan- Lessons from the Last War (October 9, 2001)
      "...Archive experts John Prados and Svetlana Savranskaya draw on declassified records and the memoirs of former Soviet officials to examine Soviet policymaking, military operations, and lessons learned from the last war in Afghanistan, a bloody, ten-year conflict that pitted Soviet military forces against CIA-backed Afghan rebels."
    • Volume III: BIOWAR (October 25, 2001)
      The Nixon Administration's Decision to End U.S. Biological Warfare Programs
      Edited by Dr. Robert A. Wampler
      "In order to provide historical context for these events and revelations, The National Security Archive is making available a collection of documents that shed light upon the decision made by President Richard M. Nixon in 1969 to end all U.S. offensive biological (and chemical) weapons programs."
    • Volume IV: The Once and Future King?
      From the Secret Files on King Zahir's Reign in Afghanistan, 1970-1973
      National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 59
      Edited by William Burr, October 26, 2001
    • Volume V: Anthrax at Sverdlovsk, 1979
      U.S. Intelligence on the Deadliest Modern Outbreak
      National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 61
      Edited by Robert A. Wampler and Thomas S. Blanton, November 15, 2001

GPO Access
Superintendent of Documents Home Page
"GPO Access is a service of the U.S. Government Printing Office that provides free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government. The information provided on this site is the official, published version."

Great American Speeches
80 Years of Political Oratory
"You have discovered one of the most comprehensive on-line collections of speech texts of contemporary American History. Here you can read the speeches and backgrounds of many of the most influential and poignant speakers of the recorded age. To help put each speaker in historical context, we have also provided a brief timeline of historical events."
PBS Online

The Great Debate & Beyond : The History of Televised Presidential Debates
1960-1996
A wonderful multimedia presentation from "The Great Debate" between Kennedy and Nixon in 1960 through the 1996 debate between Bush and Clinton.
Includes Curriculum Resources.
By the Museum of Broadcast Communications

H-US1918-45: The New Deal and its Origins
Discussion Network
"...a member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine. H-US1918-45, The New Deal era and its Origins, provides a forum for research and teaching the history of the United States, from 1918 to 1945."

The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress
"The papers of the author, educator, and political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) are one of the principal sources for the study of modern intellectual life. Located in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, they constitute a large and diverse collection reflecting a complex career. With over 25,000 items (about 75,000 digital images), the papers contain correspondence, articles, lectures, speeches, book manuscripts, transcripts of Adolf Eichmannís trial proceedings, notes, and printed matter pertaining to Arendt's writings and academic career ... Parts of the collection will be made available for public access on the Internet. The current preview of selections from Arendt's writings also includes an essay on Arendt's intellectual history, a chronology of her life, and an index of all folders in the Arendt Papers."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Harvard University - Open Collections Program

  • Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
    "...is a web-based collection of selected historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression."
  • Women Working, 1800-1930
    "...focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images..."

Hind's Precedents of the of the House of Representatives of the United States:
Including References to Provisions of the Constitution and Laws, and Decisions of the United States Senate
By Asher C. Hinds, 1907

Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande:
The Juan B. Rael Collection, 1940.
"...is an online presentation of a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado...to document alabados (hymns), folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes...In addition to these recordings, the collection includes manuscript materials and publications authored by Rael which provide insight into the rich musical heritage and cultural traditions of this region
- American Memory, Library of Congress

HistoricalVoices.org
"The purpose of Historical Voices is to create a significant, fully searchable online database of spoken word collections spanning the 20th century - the first large-scale repository of its kind. Historical Voices will both provide storage for these digital holdings and display public galleries that cover a variety of interests and topics."
- Part of the Digital Library Initiative II

  • The Flint Sit-Down Strike Audio Gallery
    "The Flint Sit-Down Strike website is a multi-media rich resource devoted to several purposes: 1. To provide an introduction to the sit-down strike for those students or members of the general public who are unaware of the history of this momentous event in American history. 2. To provide an immediacy and personal touch to this historical knowledge through the use of digitized audio files, which contain the actual voices of former sit-downers reminiscing about their experiences. 3. To make a site that was usable on several levels of interactivity, with information and sound files accessible through several different galleries, a Flash-generated map, a timeline, and various search functions. 4. To preserve the interviews done by Leighton etal. in a form that was relatively permanent and easily accessible."

Howard Besser's T-Shirt Database
A wonderful collection of late twentieth century popular culture.
See also his 1996 Ann Arbor T-Shirt Exhibtion - (dead link)
By UCLA Education & Info Studies Prof. Besser and his students at various universities in the 1990s

Hurricane Digital Memory Bank
Collecting and Preserving the Stories of Katrina and Rita
"...uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. George Mason Universityís Center for History and New Media and the University of New Orleans, in partnership with the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of American History and other partners, organized this project."

Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement
"The Eugenics Archive is intended to stimulate independent critical thinking about the parallels between eugenics and modern genetics research...The Archive includes more than 1,200 materials, primarily from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, which was the center of American Eugenics research from 1910-1940."

Internet Archive
"...was founded to build an ëInternet library,í with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format."
Includes sites from October 1996 to now and contains about 4 billion pages!

Korean American Digital Archive - (dead link)
"...aimed at bringing disparate collections of materials--manuscripts, documents, photographs, oral histories--together in one searchable database. The initial collection of more than 11,000 pages of documents and over 1300 photographs will continue to grow as additional materials are identified for inclusion."
University of Southern California Libraries

[Korean War] American RadioWorks - Korea: The Unfinished War
"To fully grasp the ongoing tensions between the United States and North Korea, it is important to understand the war that ended fifty years ago this summer. John Biewen and Stephen Smith of American RadioWorks examine the often-overlooked war that helped define global politics and American life for the second half of the 20th century."
Sections include: Radio Documentary (listen to the hour-long documentary or read the full transcript) ; Oral History Archive ; The Cold War Turns Hot ; Reporter's Notebooks ; The Armed Forces Integrate ; What the Experts Say ; Maps ; Links.

[Labor] Cornell University - Kheel Center Labor Photos
"The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives' collections include approximately 350,000 images from the 20th century on film, paper, glass, and other media. The collected photographic materials provide invaluable documentation of the nature of labor and management history. While the digital database will be added to continually, it represents only an introduction to the Kheel Center's holdings."

Latino Virtual Gallery - (dead link)
"Virtual Gallery will approach Latino/a contributions to Americaís history, arts and culture from a Latino/a perspective. It will feature three exhibitions every year driven by Latino histories, arts and cultures...The goal of the gallery is to provide Latino interpretations to collections related to US history and culture. Virtual Gallery seeks to provoke dialogue. It invites visitors to share their histories and impressions."
By Magdalena Mieri and Melissa Carrillo; Joint project of the University of Texas at El Paso Library and the Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives

Leonard Bernstein Collection
"The composer, conductor, writer, and teacher Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was one of 20th-century America's most important musical figures. The Leonard Bernstein Collection is one of the largest and most varied of the many special collections held by the Library of Congress Music Division. Its more than 400,000 items, including music and literary manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, audio and video recordings, fan mail, and other types of materials extensively document Bernstein's extraordinary life and career. This online Leonard Bernstein Collection makes available a selection of 85 photographs, 177 scripts from the Young People's Concerts, 74 scripts from the Thursday Evening Previews, and over 1,100 pieces of correspondence, in addition to the collection's complete Finding Aid.
- American Memory Project, Library of Congress

Library of Congress - American Memory

Library of Congress - Exhibitions

  • Churchill and the Great Republic
    "This exhibition preview examines the life and career of Winston Spencer Churchill and emphasizes his lifelong links with the United States--the nation he called 'the great Republic.' The exhibition comes nearly forty years after the death of Winston Churchill and sixty years after the D-Day allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France during World War II. It commemorates both of these events."

The Living Room Candidate
Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2004
- American Museum of the Moving Image

Los Angeles--A City in Stress - (dead link)
"Growing out of Los Angeles--A City in Stress, this project involves bringing up on the Web a series of full text documents dealing with the manifold problems of Los Angeles in the 1990's with emphasis on the civil disturbances of April and May 1992."
- University of Southern California Libraries

  • Violence in the City: An End or a Beginning? - (dead link)
    A Report by the Governor's Commission on the Los Angeles Riots, December 2, 1965
    (The McCone Report)
    "The digitization of this document is being undertaken as part of an on-going project to digitize many documents dealing with Los Angeles in the 1990's."

Malcolm X Conference - (dead link)

Marriage, Women, and the Law, 1815-1914
Studies in Scarlet
"This unique digital collection is the result of a coordinated, transnational project, "Studies in Scarlet," sponsored by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). With a focus on family law and domestic relations in the 19th century, the collection provides scholars throughout the world with electronic access to materials supporting research on a broad range of topics, including marriage, divorce, adultery, miscegenation, polygamy, and birth control. The content of the collection, gleaned from case reports, statutes, novels, newspapers, diaries, and letters, is designed to support scholarship in disciplines including law, history, sociology, political science, women's studies, and criminology."
RLG Digital Collections Project

Martin Luther King: Living Memory Resources for Teachers and Students - (dead link)

Mary Baker Eddy Institute
Founder of Christian Science.
Includes full-text of the most important of Mary Baker Eddy's writings:

[McCarthy] - Closed-Door McCarthy Transcripts Released (May 5, 2003)

  • Senate Government Affairs Committee Prints, 107th Congress
    S. Prt. 107-84 -- Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations (McCarthy Hearings 1953-54)
  • National Public Radio (NPR) - All Things Considered [audio or text] (May 5, 2003)
    Documents Shed Light on "Executive Sessions"
    "...talks with Donald Ritchie, Asssoicate [sic] Senate Historian, about the release of some 9,000 pages of previously sealed transcripts of McCarthy's closed-door interrogations from 1953 to 1954. It is the largest disclosure of documents related to the McCarthy investigation, and offers a new look at what went on behind closed doors of some 160 executive sessions."
    Includes testimony by Langston Hughes and Aaron Copland.

Movie Collection: Internet Moving Images Archive
"This collection contains movies that the Prelinger Archives has digitized (about 750 now online) and donated to the Internet Archive. The films focus mainly on everyday life, culture, industry, and institutions in North America in the 20th century ... This is the first time that most of the films have been available to the public."
- Internet Archive

National Academy Press (free downloads)

New Deal Network: A Guide to the Great Depression of the 1930s
 "The New Deal Network is an educational web site sponsored by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Institute for Learning Technologies at Teachers College/Columbia University...Classroom Resources, including lesson plans, Web projects, and bibliographical materials...Online Resources on FDR and the Great Depression...Over 4000 Images from the National Archives, the FDR Library and other sources."

Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
A Film by Ken Burns and Paul Banes
PBS Online multimedia Website to accompany the film - includes essays and historical documents.

Oakland Museum of California

  • Helen Nestor: Personal and Political
    "The exhibition presents 33 vintage black and white photographs of the California social scene of the '60s and '70s, documenting such subjects as the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, nontraditional California families, Vietnam War protests, California feminists, mid-life women, the early days of busing in the Berkeley Unified School District, street life on Telegraph Avenue and the Haight Ashbury, and the People's Park movement."
    Special Feature: Nestor Free Speech Movement Photographs

The Online Archive of California (OAC)

  • Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA)
    "Curators from the eight participating OAC members selected a broad range of primary sources to be digitized, including: photographs, documents, manuscripts, paintings, drawings, letters, and oral histories. Over 10,000 digital images have been created complimented by 20,000 pages of electronic transcriptions of document and oral histories."

PBS - Frontline - Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
"An Investigative Biography of the Man at the Center of the Political Crime of the 20th Century."
Sections include: Oswald: Myth Mystery, and Meaning ; Twenty-Four Years ; Interviews ; Conspiracy: Cases For and Against ; Glimpses of A Life ; Links & Readings ; Teacher's Guide.
Watch the full program online.

PBS NOVA - Forgotten Genius
Companion website to the February 2007 TV broadcast. Watch episode online. Includes Teacher's Guide and Library Resource Kit.
"Against all odds, African-American chemist Percy Julian became one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century...is a fascinating and largely unknown story of scientific triumph and racial inequality. It covers the extraordinary life journey of Percy Julian, one of the great chemists of the 20th century."

PBS - The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
"A landmark four-part series [Fall 2002], THE RISE AND FALL OF JIM CROW explores segregation from the end of the civil war to the dawn of the modern civil rights movement."
Episodes: Promises Betrayed (1745-1896) ; Fighting Back (1896-1917) ; Don't Shout Too Soon (1918-1940) ; Terror and Triumph (1940-1954).
Sections include: A Century of Segregation ; Jim Crow Stories ; A National Struggle ; Interactive Maps ; Tools & Activities ; For Teachers ; Resources.

Photographs of the 369th Infantry and African Americans During World War 1
"The photographs included in this project are from Record Group 165, Records of the War Department. They are available online through the National Archives Information Locator (NAIL) database."
Part of The Constitution Community Lesson Plan.
This article was written by Joan Brodsky Schur, a teacher at Village Community School in New York, NY.

Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore
"Charles Moore's unforgettable images helped put public opinion solidly behind the civil rights movement. Seldom, if ever, has a set of photographs had such an immediate impact on the course of history."

Prairie Settlement
Nebraska Photographs and Family Letters, 1742-1912
"This digital collection integrates two collections from the holdings of the Nebraska State Historical Society, the Solomon D. Butcher photographs and the letters of the Uriah W. Oblinger family. Together they illustrate the story of settlement on the Great Plains. Approximately 3,000 glass plate negatives crafted by Butcher record the process of settlement in Nebraska between 1874 and 1912. Butcher photographed actively in central Nebraska including Custer, Buffalo, Dawson and Cherry counties. The approximately 3,000 pages of Oblinger family letters discuss land, work, neighbors, crops, religious meetings, problems with grasshoppers, financial problems, and the Easter Blizzard of 1873."
American Memory, Library of Congress

[Presidents] - See our separate U.S. Presidents page.

Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Perspectives
 "...portrays the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, and histories drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections. Among the topics it highlights are the land and its resources, relations with Spain, the competition among political parties, reform efforts, and recollections by veterans of the Spanish-American War. The materials in the collection were published between 1831 and 1929 and consist of 39 political pamphlets, 18 monographs, and 1 journal."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Radical America
"...was a product of the campus-based New Left of the late 1960s, specifically the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), but the magazine long outlived its seedbed. Its trajectory shows something about the effort to place an intellectual stamp on the radical impulses of the late twentieth century."
- Brown University Library - Center for Digital Initiatives

Rear View Mirror - (dead link)
Automobile Images and American Identities
UC, Riverside Museum of Photography

[Reagan] - See our Separate Ronald Reagan page.

Remembering Jim Crow
By Stephen Smith, Kate Ellis, and Sasha Asianian
"For much of the 20th Century, African Americans in the South were barred from the voting booth, sent to the back of the bus, and walled off from many of the rights they deserved as American citizens. Until well into the 1960s, segregation was legal. The system was called Jim Crow. In this documentary, Americansóblack and whiteóremember life in the Jim Crow times."
Presented by American RadioWorks

The Road of American Democracy, 1984-1990 (ROAD)
"...include[s] election returns, socioeconomic summaries, and demographic measures of the American public at unusually low levels of geographic aggregation. The NSF-supported ROAD project covers every state in the country from 1984 through 1990 (including some off-year elections). One collection of data sets includes every election at and above State House, along with party registration and other variables, in each state for the roughly 170,000 precincts nationwide (about 60 times the number of counties). Another collection has added to these (roughly 30-40) political variables an additional 3,725 variables merged from the 1990 U.S. Census for 47,327 aggregate units (about 15 times the number of counties) about the size one or more cities or towns. These units completely tile the U.S. landmass. This collection also includes geographic boundary files so users can easily draw maps with these data."
Harvard University

The Rockefellers
Includes film transcript, primary sources, teacher's guide, bibliography, maps, timeline.
American Experience - PBS Online

Save Our Sounds
A Joint Project of the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress
"The collections include thousands of recordings from every state of the union and include every genre of spoken word and music -- speeches, tales, biographical narrative, poetry, blues, gospel, jazz, folk, ethnic, country, bluegrass and old time, polka and contra, western swing and conjunto, pow wow and sacred song -- providing a documentary aural history of the nation from the late 19th century to the present."

Smithsonian Institution

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, Six Later Reflections
Scout Report Archives.

Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
"...is a multiformat ethnographic field collection that includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States...recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music from more than 300 performers. These recordings represent a broad spectrum of traditional musical styles, including ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals, and work songs."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

The Stars and Strip: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919
"From February 8, 1918, to June 13, 1919, by order of General John J. Pershing, the United States Army published a newspaper for its forces in France, The Stars and Stripes. This online collection, presented by the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress, includes the complete seventy-one-week run of the newspaper's World War I edition."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Supreme Court of the United States
Official site of the U.S. Supreme Court
Sections include: About the Court ; Docket ; Oral Arguments ; Bar Admissions ; Court Rules ; Case Handling Guides ; Opinions ; Orders ; Visiting the Court ; Public Information ; Related Websites.

Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991
"...contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. These panoramas offer an overview of the nation, its enterprises and its interests, with a focus on the start of the twentieth century when the panoramic photo format was at the height of its popularity."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Teaching the JAH [Journal of American History]

  • Empires, Exceptions, and Anglo-Saxons:
    Race and Rule between the British and United States Empires, 1880-1910
    By Paul A. Kramer, Journal of American History 88 (March 2002), 1215-53.
    Sections include: The Article ; Teaching the Article ; Primary Sources ; Further Readings ; Links.

Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film
"Theodore Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to have his career and life chronicled on a large scale by motion picture companies (even though his predecessors, Grover Cleveland and William McKinley, were the first to be filmed). This presentation features 104 films which record events in Roosevelt's life from the Spanish-American War in 1898 to his death in 1919; 8 of these films have previously appeared in other American Memory presentations. The majority of films (87) are from the Theodore Roosevelt Association Collection, while the remainder are from the Paper Print Collection."
American Memory, Library of Congress

Thomas A. Edison Papers
"For the present this site will make available a searchable document database linked to document images for Parts IñIII (1847ñ1898) and