LibGuides: 21H.226: Riots, Strikes, and Conspiracies in American History: Find Primary Sources

Using the Library Catalog to Find Primary Sources

To find book primary sources, use library catalogs like Barton and WorldCat.

Do subject searches for topic + genre:
- Subheadings such as "correspondence," "sources," "personal narratives," "biography," and "speeches" can point to primary sources.
- Pair these subheadings with keywords or topical subject headings in Barton to identify relevant sources in the MIT Libraries.
- See this table for other possible subheadings.
- For example, do this advanced search to get published collections of primary source documents about the civil rights movement:
  - Keyword = "civil rights" [This will search for that exact phrase]
  - Subject words = history sources

Do advanced searches in Barton for relevant subjects and keywords with publication date limits.
- For example, do this advanced search to find books about strikes in the Progressive Era:
  - Keywords = strike*
  - Year from = 1890
  - Year to = 1929

Primary Sources - Online Through MIT

American Decades Primary Sources
Includes full or excerpted primary sources representing the seminal issues, themes, movements and events from a decade. Includes oral histories, songs, speeches, advertisements, TV, play and movie scripts, letters, laws, legal decisions, newspaper articles, cartoons, recipes, and more.
Congressional Record
If the riot, strike or conspiracy was debated in Congress, then it should be in the Congressional Record, the official record of congressional debates.
Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970
Large-scale maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities that show building footprints, building use, addresses, parks, cemeteries, industrial uses & more.
Ethnic NewsWatch (1990-present)
A full-text collection of newspapers, journals and magazines published by ethnic and minority presses.
Government, Politics, and Protest: Essential Primary Sources
Explores the causes and nature of protest as well as the historical tension between protest and government, including underlying causes. Included are approximately 175 full or excerpted documents---speeches, legislation, magazine and newspaper articles, essays, memoirs, letters, interviews, novels, songs, and works of art---as well as overview information that places each document in context.
HeinOnline
Full-text archive of historical legal and governmental information, including Presidential, Congressional, and Supreme Courts documents and legal journals.
Historic Documents
Annual publication featuring documents covering the most significant events of the year. Documents include presidential speeches, international agreements, Supreme Court decision, scientific findings, cultural discussions, and other primary sources. 1972 - present.
Historical Statistics of the United States
Compendium of US historical statistics from over 1000 sources, plus scholarly essays. Tables can be viewed in PDF/HTML & downloaded in Excel or CSV.
LexisNexis Academic: Legal Cases
Online access to federal and state cases.
The Nation Archive
Backfile of The Nation magazine back to volume 1, issue 1. Updated monthly 1865 - present.
NewspaperArchive.com
Thousands of newspapers, available in full-page facsimile, with searchable full text. Most are U.S. titles, with some international coverage, and most are fairly small-circulation newspapers. 1759-present.
Oxford African American Studies Center
Over 300 annotated primary sources in black history, from letters to speeches to legal documents, from the 17th century to contemporary documents. Click on "browse" to see the documents by time period or topic.
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Atlanta Constitution
1868-1942
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Boston Globe
1872-1979
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune
1849-1986
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
1881-1986
Proquest Historical Newspapers: New York Times
1851-2006
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Wall Street Journal
1889-1992
Proquest Historical Newspapers: Washington Post
1877-1993
Reader's Guide Retrospective (1890-1982)
Indexing and abstracting for many general interest magazines. Great source for historical material on the 20th-century.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research
Archive of data from public opinion surveys. Download data from their catalog or search IPoll, their question-level database of survey results.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600 to 2000
Primary sources in the history of women in social movements in the U.S. Includes 105 document projects and archives and more 53,000 pages of additional full-text documents.

Contemporary Newspapers and Periodicals - Online Through MIT

LexisNexis Academic
Full text of many newspapers and periodicals.
Academic Search Complete
A multi-disciplinary database that includes articles from many different kinds of publications, including newspapers and magazines.

Primary Sources - Online Through Boston Public Library

With a BPL card or e-card, you can access a wealth of online historical primary sources.

19th Century US Newspapers
Full-text content and images from numerous newspapers from a range of urban and rural regions throughout the U.S.
Archive of Americana: 1639-1980 (Boston Public Library)
Contains unique primary source material relating to nearly every aspect of United States history from over three centuries.
Includes:
* American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I (1760-1900)
* America's Historical Newspapers (1690-1922)
* Early American Imprints Series I: Evans (1639-1800)
* Early American Imprints Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819)
* American State Papers (1789-1838)
* U.S. Congressional Serial Set (1817-1980)
Sabin Americana
Contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.
Slavery & Anti-Slavery
Collections on the transatlantic slave trade, the global movement for the abolition of slavery, the legal, personal, and economic aspects of the slavery system, and the dynamics of emancipation in the U.S. as well as in Latin America, the Caribbean, and other regions.
Archives Unbound: Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
Between the early 1920s and early 1980s, the Justice Department and its Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in widespread investigation of those deemed politically suspect. Prominent among the targets of this sometimes coordinated, sometimes independent surveillance were aliens, members of various protest groups, Socialists, Communists, pacifists, militant labor unionists, ethnic or racial nationalists and outspoken opponents of the policies of the incumbent presidents.
Archives Unbound: "We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death:" Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
FBI records, including surveillance reports, chronologies, witness statements and more.
Archives Unbound: Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s
Fulltext, full image database of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's previously classified files on prominent radicals and radical organizations from 1959 to 1971.
Archives Unbound: Politics, Social Activism and Community Support: Selected Gay and Lesbian Periodicals and Newsletters
Newsletters issued by gay and lesbian political and social activist organizations throughout the country and periodicals devoted to gay and lesbian political and social activist agendas.
Archives Unbound: The Greensboro Massacre, 1979: Shootout between the American Nazis and the Communist Workers Party
Records from the FBI, local and state police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

Free Primary Sources on the Internet

American Memory (Library of Congress)
Written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience from the collections of the Library of Congress and
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
American newspapers from 1789-1963. Bulk downloads and API access available!
Google Book Search
Many thousands of searchable books digitized by Google in collaboration with libraries and publishers.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
Find full text PDFs of digitized books and other content from libraries around the world. You can search within the full text of all the items in the collection, but viewing some items is limited by copyright/licensing - check: full view only to search only for downloadable books.
Kheel Center Labor Photos (Cornell)
350,000 images from the 20th century on film, paper, glass, and other media documenting the nature of labor and management history.
Making of America (Cornell)
Primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction, strongest in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. This site provides access to 267 monograph volumes and over 100,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. A collaboration with the University of Michigan.
Making of America (University of Michigan)
Primary sources in American social history primarily from the antebellum period through reconstruction, strongest in education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The book collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books with 19th century imprints. A collaboration with Cornell University.
Time Archive (1923-present)
Back issues of the popular news magazine. (Hint: you can use the free online search to identify articles and then, to see the original article in context, take a look at the print or fiche by requesting it from storage or viewing it in Dewey or Hayden.)

Primary Sources at Nearby Libraries

Harper's Weekly (1857-1912)
Complete digital editions of Harper's Weekly from 1857-1912. Search by full-text, subject heading, or Thesaurus-based index. Or browse by Table of Contents, theme, or date.
NOTE: Access is only available in person at the BPL.
Harvard Libraries E-Resources
Harvard has a trove of online databases of primary source material, including historical newspapers, government documents, letters and diaries, and much more. With your Harvard Special Borrower card, you can visit Harvard libraries and use these databases on the premises (sorry, you can't use them remotely). Take a look at the list of history databases for anything promising for your primary source research!
Newspapers at Boston Public Library - Copley Square
This page links to lists of BPL historical newspaper holdings on microfilm.
Widener Collection of Newspapers on Microfilm
A database of the newspapers on microfilm at Harvard's Widener Library, searchable by geography and date span. The newspaper microfilm are accessible with a Harvard Special Borrowers Card.

Humanities and Digital Scholarship Librarian

Ece Turnator

Contact:

Ece (pronounced AJ)
turnator@mit.edu
Hayden Library Consultation Suite 14S - 2nd floor
617.253.4979
Make an appointment with me