Primary sources predominantly from Atlanta, Chicago, St Louis, Brooklyn, and towns and cities in North Carolina.
The collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through personal diaries and scrapbooks, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.
Searchable monographs, pamphlets, broadsides, government documents, and ephemera. Includes series I, II, & supplements (1639-1819) and Afro-Americana Imprints, 1535-1922.
Over 30,000 broadsides and ephemeral publications, 1749-1900.
Rare printed documents that were never intended to last. Includes notices, advertisements, playbills, music programs, menus, greeting cards, sailing cards, cookbooks, stamps and more, providing a unique perspective on early American life.
Manuscripts and individual item collections from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History holds one of the outstanding collections on American history. It is full of spectacular individual items, but it also has rich veins of manuscript research material. This makes it ideal for teaching survey courses on American history, but equally valuable as a platform for undergraduate essay work and postgraduate research.
Contains the following modules:
• Module I: Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
• Module II: Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945
Documentary films & newsreels of significant events in U.S. history, 1492-2001, and filmed 1898-2010.
Upon completion, American History in Video will contain over 5700 documentary films and newsreels (over 2000 hours) of significant events in U.S. history, in streaming video. Each film includes a transcript. Clips and playlists can be created, saved and shared. Videos can be downloaded to an Apple OS or Android phone, good for 48 hours.
American history, literature, and cultural primary sources, spanning five centuries.
Presents manuscript and typescript letters, diaries, notebooks, journals, newspapers, art works, illustrations, photographs, video, and 360-degree objects. This platform facilitates the cross-searching of the following seven standalone Adam Matthew collections:
Guide to historical records, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world
Contains nearly a million collection descriptions contributed by thousands of libraries, museums, and archives. A combination of brief descriptions derived from catalog records in the RLG Union Catalog, and more detailed archival finding aids harvested from the Internet, including those that conform to the EAD (Encoded Archival Description) format standard.
Portal to several full-text American and English literature databases.
Includes the following collections:
* AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY
* AMERICAN POETRY
* AMERICAN DRAMA 1714–1915
* CANADIAN POETRY
* EARLY AMERICAN FICTION 1789–1850
* EARLY ENGLISH PROSE FICTION
* EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
* ENGLISH DRAMA
* ENGLISH POETRY, SECOND EDITION
* NINETEENTH-CENTURY FICTION
* TWENTIETH-CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY
* TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY
These collections will eventually migrate to the ProQuest platform, and this database link and description will be updated.
Collection of documents relating to civil rights. Includes government reports, Congressional Committee documents and legislative histories, Supreme Court briefs, and some scholarly articles.
Primary texts as well as secondary sources, covering fiction and literature from 1500 on.
Includes these databases:
• Black Short Fiction and Folklore
• Early American Fiction 1789-1875
• Early English Prose Fiction
• Eighteenth-Century Fiction
• Latino Literature: Poetry, Drama, and Fiction
• Literature Online
• Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Primary sources for 19th and 20th century U.S. history.
Includes collections in the following areas:
• Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle
• Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War
• American Indians and the American West
• American Politics and Society
• International Relations and Military Conflicts
• Women's Studies
• Workers, Labor Unions, and Radical Politics
Maps, manuscripts, motion pictures, sheet music, photos, sound recordings, and books and text, arranged by topic, time period, and place.
American Memory is a digital record of American history and creativity, providing free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. 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.
A growing collection of digitized rare medical texts, video, and other formats in the Internet Archive.
The Medical Heritage Library is a digitized collection of rare books from leading medical libraries. The contents cover all areas in the history of medicine and can be browsed by title, author, subject/keyboard, and date. Contributors include the National Library of Medicine, the New York Public Library and the medical libraries of Columbia, Harvard, and Yale.
Plays published in the United States in the nineteenth century.
This text collection consists of over 4,700 plays published in the United States from the early nineteenth century to its close. Included within Nineteenth-Century American Drama: Popular Culture & Entertainment, 1820-1900 are hundreds of annotated copies of prompt books and manuscripts that serve to reveal the changing intentions of authors and the artistic views of directors. Also included is a wide variety of works, such as historical plays, melodramas, political satires, minstrel shows, comic operas, musical extravaganzas, parlor entertainments, adaptations of novels, and many others. The resource seeks to shed light on areas of study generally supported to this point only by imprints and newspapers: daily life in the United States; politics, both local and national; culture in all of its forms; and the shifting and evolving tastes of Americans from across the country.
Primary source collection of 19th century medical material aimed at the general public, including books, pamphlets, and advertising ephemera.
Documents the history of "popular" remedies and treatments in nineteenth century America, through primary source materials drawn from the extensive collections at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Emphasis is on material that was aimed at the general public rather than medical professionals. Explore an array of printed sources, including rare books, pamphlets, trade cards, and visually-rich advertising ephemera. The material covers popular trends such as phrenology, herbal medicine and hydrotherapy, and documents the rise of widespread advertising by commercial manufacturers of medical aids.
Civil Rights Movement, segregation, discrimination, and racial theory in America during three pivotal decades of the twentieth century.
Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict.
Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource compiles 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.
Large-scale plans of urban areas. Maps of over 12,000 US cities and towns.
Sanborn maps, large-scale plans of a city or town, were created to assist fire insurance companies assess the risk associated with insuring a particular property. This collection includes 660,000 maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities.
Brings together instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of conduct.
Searchable handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books of instructional, prescriptive, behavioral, and etiquette literature that defined standards of personal conduct for millions of Americans and reflected the prevailing social mores across the twentieth century. When complete, the collection will contain 150,000 pages that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave.
Publications from the colonial period through to the twentieth century.
This resource provides a history of the American people and a testament to the growth of the nation. The periodicals focused on American concerns and were predominantly published in the United States or Canada, though some were published overseas by Americans living abroad. The collection offers multiple perspectives on the thought, culture, and society of North America through the eyes of those who lived it, showing how history affected citizens from all walks of life.
Indigenous journalism from communities in the United States and Canada, 1828 to 2016.
North American Indigenous journalism spanning two centuries with this major digital resource. Featuring publications from a range of communities, with an extensive list of periodicals produced in the United States and Canada, including Alaska and Hawaii, from 1828 to 2016.
Languages represented include English, Chinuk Wawa, Dakota, Diné Bizaad, Lakota, Sm'algyax, and Ōlelo Hawaiʻi.
1740-1940. Special interest & general magazines; literary & professional journals; children's & women's magazines; other historically significant periodicals.
The experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media, 1704 - today. Trial access until Friday, April 30, 2021. Send feedback to pgstreby@umich.edu.
Archive of historical and current issues of the Detroit News, covering the years 1873 - present.
Full-text access to the complete backfile of the Detroit News, going back to 1873. Important notes about searching the Detroit News:
• Page images are available for the years 1873-1988
• When searching for content or topics between or relevant to 1873-1988, do NOT use the drop-down menu options under "Select a Field" in the Advanced Search. No article-level metadata is included for these years (i.e., there are no headlines, bylines, section headings, etc., identified). Use the default search options.
• Some web-only content is included (2005-current)
All issues of the oldest general interest monthly in America, publishing essays, fiction, and reporting on politics, society, the environment, and culture.
Digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines, and journals.
Drawn from the special collections of participating libraries, these periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press, and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Independent Voices is made possible by the funding support received from libraries and donors across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Through their funding, these libraries and donors are demonstrating their commitment to open access digital collections. Full access to Independent Voices is available exclusively to funding libraries through December 2018. The collection will become entirely open access in January 2019.
Local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations, by sympathetic publishers, and by Klan opponents 1921-1932.
From its birth immediately following the Civil War to its re-awakening inspired by the film Birth of a Nation in 1915 through today’s fractured organizations using the Klan’s name, the Ku Klux Klan has occupied a persistent place in American society. At its peak in 1924, Klan-paid membership exceeded 4,000,000 and its national newspaper, the Imperial Night-Hawk, had a circulation larger than the New York Times.
Full-text searchable access to the complete backfile of the Michigan Chronicle, a leading voice for Blacks in Detroit and beyond.
Provides searchable, full-text access to the full archive of the Michigan Chronicle. The Michigan Chronicle was founded in 1936 by John Sengstacke, the owner of the Chicago Defender, and has continued to be a leading voice for Blacks in Detroit and beyond. Early on, the paper gained national attention for what was viewed at the time as its radical point of view by supporting both organized labor and the Democratic Party.
Michigan Chronicle played a pivotal role in civil rights of the 20th century including its involvement in negotiations at the Attica Prison uprising in 1971. It consistently reported on efforts of Black citizens to better themselves in the 1950s and 60s as they integrated into Detroit neighborhoods. In 1974, the Chronicle took the lead on supporting Coleman Young, Detroit’s first Black mayor, and in its relentless reporting on violence against African Americans.
This newspaper offers primary source material essential to the study of American history and African-American culture, history, politics, and the arts. Examine major movements from the Great Migration and Civil Rights to the election of America’s first Black president. Explore nearly nine decades of everyday life as written from the perspective of this Detroit-based paper providing researchers with unprecedented access to perspectives and information excluded or marginalized in mainstream sources.
Cover-to-cover digital images of full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers. Includes articles, advertisements, and illustrations.
All issues of American Spectator, Commentary, Commonweal, Dissent, Harper's Magazine, NACLA, The Nation, National Review, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, and The New Yorker.
Custom ProQuest cross-search of full-text backfiles of 20 U.S. and 4 international English-language newspapers. Click "More" for individual titles.
Includes:
• Arizona Republican (1890-1922)
• Atlanta Constitution (1868-1984)
• Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003) *
• Baltimore Afro-American (1893-1988) *
• Baltimore Sun (1837-1922)
• Chicago Defender (1909-1975) *
• Chicago Tribune (1849-1994)
• Christian Science Monitor (1908-2004)
• Cincinnati Enquirer (1841-1922)
• Cleveland Call and Post (1934-1991) *
• Dayton Daily News (1831-1999)
• Detroit Free Press (1831-1922)
• The Guardian (1821-2003) & The Observer (1791-2003)
• Jerusalem Post (1932-2008)
• Los Angeles Sentinel (1934-2005) *
• Los Angeles Times (1881-1994)
• Louisville Courier Journal (1830-1922)
• Nashville Tennessean (1812-1922)
• New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993) *
• New York Times (1851-2014)
• Norfolk Journal and Guide (1916-2003)
• Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001)
• Pittsburgh Courier (1911-2002) *
• South China Morning Post (1903-1998)
• Wall Street Journal (1889-2000)
• Washington Post (1877-2001)
All the newspapers can be searched individually or in combinations in this database. They are listed separately in the A-Z list as "Historical Newspapers: Title." Newspapers noted with * are also searchable in the database Black Historical Newspapers.
Numerous publications for women. and including many female writers.
Includes the following collections, which can also be searched separately:
• Religious Periodicals for Women, Children, and Families, 1804-1878
• Women’s Periodicals of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century, 1733-1844
• Women’s Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century, 1845-1865
• Women’s Periodicals of the Nineteenth Century, 1866-1891
