Library Research Guides: HIST 252: The 20th Century Black Freedom Struggle: Primary Sources

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Umbra Search
"Umbra Search African American History makes African American history more broadly accessible through a freely available widget and search tool, umbrasearch.org." Use the search to find materials across archives.

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Race

Race Relations in America
"Documenting 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."
Civil Rights Digital Library
Links to dozens of external archives on the Civil Rights Movement.
SNCC Digital Gateway
A portal to SNCC-related digital primary source collections.
Wisconsin Historical Society Freedom Summer Collection
The foremost collection of digital materials on Freedom Summer. "More than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts -- enough to fill several file cabinets -- are available online. In them you will find official records of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)" and more.

Chicago Defender, 1909-1975 This link opens in a new window
The full text of one of America's biggest African-American newspapers. Browsable by article type (obituary, editorial, etc).
Dates: 1909-1975 CE
African American Communities This link opens in a new window
Focusing primarily on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and North Carolina, this resource documents multiple aspects of African American communities through pamphlets, news, letters, photos, maps, and oral histories. Themes include arts and culture, civil rights and Black power, education, policing, and faith and religion.
Dates: 1810-2011 CE
African American Newspapers, 1827-1998 This link opens in a new window
Full-text of 282 Black American newspapers.
Dates: 1827-1998 CE
Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Thousands of articles by scholars focused on the lives and events that have shaped African American and African history and culture, along with primary source documents, encyclopedias, and biographies.

Black Liberation: Freedom Archives
Collections on people, organizations, and publications from the Black freedom struggle. Includes images and audio.
Black Press Research Collective Resources
Links to digitized black newspapers online, predominantly 20th century.
Who Speaks for the Negro?
Civil Rights Movement interviews, from Vanderbilt University
Library of Congress: African American Newspapers
Browse issues of African American newspapers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Black Quotidian: Everyday Life in African-American Newspapers
Civil Rights History Project
Interviews with hundreds of activists from all over the U.S., from the Library of Congress.
KZSU Project South Interviews
Recorded interviews & meetings in 1965 of black & white civil rights workers in the South, conducted by Stanford University's radio station (KZSU).

Mainstream Politics and Political Culture

Political Americana
A major collection of materials from U.S. national political campaigns, including pamphlets, political cartoons, buttons, and more.
Congressional Hearings
Digitzed congressional hearings from all committees, 1958-present. "A hearing is a meeting or session of a Senate, House, joint, or special committee of Congress, usually open to the public, to obtain information and opinions on proposed legislation, conduct an investigation, or evaluate/oversee the activities of a government department or the implementation of a Federal law."
Hoover Institution Political Poster Collection
Over 30,000 political and cultural posters primarily from the mid-20th century, including 10,000 American posters.

Newspapers and Media

Ad Views
Thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, dated 1950s - 1980s.
Marion Stokes Movies and Video Collection
Stokes amassed a huge archive of videotaped television news, which is slowly being made available through the work of the Internet Archive. Her groundbreaking television show (co-produced with her husband John S Stokes Jr), Input, addressed many pressing issues, and much of it remains relevant today. As of 10/2019, most of the videos available are from 1968-1971.
Voices from the Southern Civil Rights Movement: Public Broadcasting
"Presents educational and noncommercial radio programs from the 1950s and 1960s that offer historic testimonies – in interviews, speeches, and on-the-spot news reports – from many movement participants, both well-known and unknown. "

Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Index of over three million articles from more than 550 US and Canadian magazines on every topic from science to forestry, social issues to biking.
Dates: 1890-1982 CE

News
by Wellesley College Research & Instruction Staff Last Updated Jan 27, 2025 201 views this year

American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Discover historic programs of publicly funded radio and television across America. Watch and listen.
Ad*Access
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.

America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Full text of more than 1,000 historical U.S. newspapers. Contains Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922, and African American Newspapers, 1827-1998.
Dates: 1690-1998 CE
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
The diaries and letters of over 1300 North American women, mostly white and elite. Common topics include health, relationships, religion, politics, economics, home life, and travel.
Dates: 1600-1950 CE
Ethnic American Newspapers from the Balch Collection, 1799-1971 This link opens in a new window
More than 130 newspapers published by and for American ethnic groups, with German-American, Irish-American, and Japanese-American papers forming the bulk. English language news is predominant.
Dates: 1799-1971 CE
American Periodicals, 1740-1940 This link opens in a new window
Full text of over 1,000 American magazines and journals from colonial times to the early 20th century, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, and children's and women's magazines.
Dates: 1740-1940 CE

Hathi Trust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
Chronicling America: Digitized Historical Newspapers
Chronicling America is a website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Sort newspapers by ethnicity, date, and state.
Library of Congress Digital Collections
Digitized papers from cultural sources, image collections, political figures, and more. Spans all time periods.
Digital Portals to State History