Research Guides: Primary Sources Research Guide: Find sources about events or experiences

Search tips

Try an open web search for your topic + a phrase associated with an archival collection, e.g., manuscripts, papers, or "finding aid".
- e.g., "Berlin Wall" "digital archive"
If you know the kind of source you want, try that as a search term.
- e.g., Attica Prison (riot or rebellion or uprising) interview - more info on how this search is constructed
Find sources about social identities:
- Look for collections organized around specific social identities.
- Include contemporary and historical names for social identity categories e.g., ("Afro-American" or "African American") scientists sources.
- Include synonyms for your group - e.g., (women or gender) medieval sources.
- Consult relevant research guides, which list specific primary source collections.

Collections organized around historical events or experiences

Slavery and Abolition

American Slavery Collection (1820-1922) This link opens in a new window
Digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials, with more than 3,500 works.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938
Over 2,000 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former enslaved people, collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project. When using these sources, consult the contextualizing note "The Limitations of the Slave Narrative Collection" on the site.
Freedom on the Move
Database of over 30,000 ads seeking fugitive enslaved people. Searchable by geography, personal descriptors, date, and enslaver. Transcribed data may be downloaded.
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery aims to identify, digitize, transcribe, and publish ads placed in newspapers across the United States (and beyond) by formerly enslaved people searching for family members and loved ones after emancipation.
Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection
This collection from Cornell University includes pamphlets and leaflets documenting the anti-slavery struggle at local, regional, and national levels.

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice (1490-2007) This link opens in a new window
Thousands of pamphlets, books, paintings, maps and images documenting the varieties and legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective, and the continued existence of slavery today.

Vietnam War

America and the Vietnam War Research Guide

Collections organized around social identities

African American Newspapers (History Commons) (1827-1902) This link opens in a new window
Starting with Freedom's Journal in 1827, the database will eventually contain all major African-American newspapers published in the U.S. during the 19th century.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
Archives of Sexuality and Gender covers the sixteenth to twentieth centuries in historical primary-source publications relating to the history and study of sex, sexuality, gender, and gender studies research. Sources include newsletters, organizational papers, government documents, manuscripts, and pamphlets. Our access includes LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940 (Parts 1 and 2), Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century, and International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture.
African American Newspapers (Readex) (1827-1998) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers from more than 35 states and chronicles a century and a half of the African American experience.
Black Studies Center (25,000 BC to present) This link opens in a new window
Cross-searchable gateway to black studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and more.

Digital Transgender Archive
An online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. The DTA treats "transgender as a practice rather than an identity category in order to bring together a trans-historical and trans-cultural collection of materials related to trans-ing gender."
Disability History Museum
Sources associated with the cultural and social history of people with disabilities across the lifespan and diagnosis categories.

HAPI: Hispanic American Periodicals Index (1970 to present) This link opens in a new window
Covers analyses of current political, economic, and social issues to unique coverage of Latin American arts.
HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
Streaming oral histories documenting African American contributions to American culture, social movements & organizations, and history. Interviewees speak about life in the arts, business, civics, education, entertainment, law, media, medicine, the military, politics, religion, science, sports & style.

NYPL LGBT+ Digital Collections
Hundreds of photographs, artwork, and other materials from the LGBTQ collections in the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division. Example of accessible digital collections are: International Gay Information Center Collection, ACT UP New York records, Diana Davies photographs, Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen gay history papers and photographs, Mattachine Society, Inc. of New York records, and Gay Activists Alliance records, 1970-1983.

North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Autobiographies, biographies, publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files of indigenous people from across North America.

Plateau Peoples' Web Portal
A collaboratively curated and reciprocally managed archive of Plateau cultural materials.
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From the portal site: "The Plateau Peoples' Web Portal is a collaboration between the Spokane Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes Of The Colville Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe of Indians, the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation and Native American Programs at Washington State University. Cultural materials are held in multiple repositories including WSU's Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture, the National Anthropological Archives and the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution."
South Asian American Digital Archive
Archive of South Asian American history includes photographs, oral histories, correspondence, ads and more.
Umbra Search: African American History
Collection of over 400,000 digitized sources in African American history, from more than 1,000 libraries, museums and archives.

Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
Full-text editions of more than 100 texts by English and American women published between 1526 and 1850; includes introductory essays written by contemporary scholars about Renaissance women writers, their texts, and related topics.
Women's Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
Searchable archive of leading women's interest magazines, dating from the 19th century through to the 21st.

Younghee Kim-Wait (Class of 1982)/Pablo Eisenberg Collection of Native American Literature
Includes works by Native American authors dating from 1772 to the present day. The collection encompasses a wide range of subjects, from fiction and poetry to philosophy and tribal histories.

Collections organized around political and social movements

American Radicalism
Books, pamphlets, periodicals, posters, and ephemera covering a wide range of viewpoints on political, social, economic, and cultural issues and movements in the United States and throughout the world.
Civil Rights Resource Guide
Digital collections and a curated list of more specific websites from the Library of Congress.
Freedom Summer Digital Archive
More than 25,000 pages from the Freedom Summer manuscripts, including "official records of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); the personal papers of movement leaders and activists such as Amzie Moore, Mary King and Howard Zinn, letters and diaries of northern college students who went South to volunteer for the summer; newsletters produced in Freedom Schools; racist propaganda, newspaper clippings, pamphlets and brochures, magazine articles, telephone call logs, candid snapshots, internal memos, press releases and much more."
Free Speech Movement Digital Archive
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) Digital Archives document the role of Mario Savio and other participants in the Free Speech Movement (University of California, Berkeley, September-December 1964), as well as its origins in political protest and civil rights movements and its legacy of political activism and educational reform that can be traced throughout the country and the world down to the present.
ACTUP Oral History Project
A collection of interviews with surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York. The interviews are listed in chronological order. Each interview has a corresponding transcript available to download as a PDF.
Detroit Revolutionary Movements Records
The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement was formed in May, 1968 at the Chrysler Dodge Main Plant in Hamtramck, Michigan. Use the links under the "Collections organization" area of the page to access particular items in the collection.
Documenting Ferguson
A community-sourced collection of "digital media captured and created by community members following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014."
A History of Domestic Work and Worker Organizing
Both a timeline of domestic work and worker organizing and a part of the National Domestic Workers Alliance's "We Make History" political education curriculum.
A People's Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland
A collaboration between Cleveland residents and professional archivists, this site collects, preserves, and shares the stories, memories, and accounts of police violence as experienced or observed by Cleveland citizens.
Project STAND
Search collections related to student activism, gathered from many college and university archives.
We Raise Our Voices
Celebrating activism for equality & pride in Boston's African American, feminist, LGBTQ & Latino Communities.