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

"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."

Links to dozens of external archives on the Civil Rights Movement.

A portal to SNCC-related digital primary source collections.

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.

Collections on people, organizations, and publications from the Black freedom struggle. Includes images and audio.

Links to digitized black newspapers online, predominantly 20th century.

Civil Rights Movement interviews, from Vanderbilt University

Browse issues of African American newspapers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Interviews with hundreds of activists from all over the U.S., from the Library of Congress.

Recorded interviews & meetings in 1965 of black & white civil rights workers in the South, conducted by Stanford University's radio station (KZSU).

A major collection of materials from U.S. national political campaigns, including pamphlets, political cartoons, buttons, and more.

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."

Over 30,000 political and cultural posters primarily from the mid-20th century, including 10,000 American posters.

Thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, dated 1950s - 1980s.

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.

"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. "

Discover historic programs of publicly funded radio and television across America. Watch and listen.

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.