Research Guides: HIST 4600: 20th Century Social Movements in the U.S. : Primary Sources

Alternative Press Archives

Independent Voices
An open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers and magazines produced by feminists, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, and the extreme right-wing press.

Magazines

Academic Search Complete
A great database to get started with for your research on any topic. Use it to search for articles from scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals, newspapers, and magazines.
American Periodicals
Full text periodicals published between 1740 and 1940.

Google Books
Full text search of books and magazines scanned by Google.
Life Magazine
1935-1970

National Geographic Magazine (1888-1994)
Provides in-depth coverage of cultures, nature, science, technology and more with comprehensive, relevant articles and legendary photographs and maps.
Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 (H.W. Wilson)
Index for general-interest, news, and opinion magazines published primarily in the United States.

Primary Sources at Atkins

List of databases that contain primary materials.

Primary Source Databases

Charlotte Observer Clippings File

The library has several reels of microfilm of newspaper articles clipped from the Charlotte Observer. The dates of coverage are 1943-1974. To access a description of the contents, go to the library's catalog and type in Charlotte Observer Clippings File.

DigitalNC

NCpedia

Historical Newspapers (Primary Sources)

African American Newspapers Series 1: 1827-1998
Provides access to U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African-American experience. This collection includes historically significant papers and features many rare 19th-century titles.
America's Historical Newspapers
Searchable American newspaper collections, including African American Newspapers Series 1, 1827-1998; Caribbean Newspapers, 1718-1876; South Carolina's Historical Newspapers; Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980; and selected historical newspapers.
Atlanta Constitution (1868-1942)
Newspaper includes obituaries, stocks and editorials.
Charlotte Observer (1886-present)
Charlotte Observer online from 1886 to the present.
Chicago Defender (1910-1975)
A leading African-American newspaper, with more than two-thirds of its readership outside of Chicago.

Chronicling America: Historic Newspapers 1789-1963
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). Supported by the NEH and the Library of Congress.

Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980
Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during 19th and 20th centuries. Many of these newspapers were published bilingually in Spanish and English.
Independent Voices
An open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers and magazines produced by feminists, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, and the extreme right-wing press.
New York Amsterdam News (1922-1993)
This leading Black newspaper of the 20th century reached its peak in the 1940s. It was a strong advocate for the desegregation of the U.S. military during World War II, and also covered the historically important Harlem Renaissance.
New York Times Historical Archives (1851-2021)
Major global newspaper including news, editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, as well as photos and advertisements.
Philadelphia Tribune (1912-2001)
The oldest continuously published black newspaper dedicated to the needs and concerns of the fourth largest black community in the U.S. During the 1930s the paper supported the growth of the United Way, rallied against the riots in Chester, PA, and continuously fought against segregation.
Times Picayune (1923-1988)
News Orleans-based newspaper covering 1923-1988

NC Collections

City and Business Directories: North Carolina, 1886-1929 Digital Archive
Historical, personal, and professional information about the inhabitants of a city and city organizations.

Civil Rights Greensboro
Civil Rights Greensboro provides access to archival resources documenting the modern civil rights era in Greensboro, North Carolina, from the 1940s to the early 1980s

Greensboro Massacre, 1979: Shootout between the American Nazis and the Communist Workers Party
Collection of documents from FBI, local and state police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Civill Rights Division of the Justice Department relating to the shootout and the aftermath.

North Carolina Newspapers (1824-2012)
Collection includes a selection of student and community newspapers from schools and towns around North Carolina
North Carolina Digital Collections
contain historic and recent photographs, state government publications, manuscripts, and other resources on topics related to North Carolina

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Collections bring together content from the Archives and Library of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

Government Documents

HeinOnline

Legal history and government documents. Contains the entire Congressional Record, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and entire databases of treaties, constitutions, case law, world trials, international trade, foreign relations, and more.
ProQuest Congressional
Provides access to Congressional information, including bills, laws, regulations, reports, documents, prints, the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, and the Congressional Record. Also includes information about members of Congress such as biographical data, voting records, campaign financial data and committees. Also includes legislative histories, bills and laws as well as regulations.
U.S. Congressional Serial Set
Reports, documents and journals of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 1817-1962.

Digital Collections

American Memory Project (Library of Congress)
Primary source materials relating to the history and culture of the U.S.
Documenting the American South
Primary source materials relating to Southern history. Open access.

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A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the 20th century. Includes: First-Person Narratives of the American South; Library of Southern Literature; North American Slave Narratives; The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865; The Church in the Southern Black Community.

North American Women's Letters and Diaries
Colonial to 1950 - includes the experiences of 632 women as revealed in diaries and letters.
Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
Letters, memoranda, cables, and directives - written or dictated by Eisenhower from the years prior to World War II through full term of his presidency.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
A civil rights group's mission - and the FBI's coverage of it - provide a perspective into American politics and society through surveillance reports, chronologies, witness statements and more.

DPLA

DPLA
A portal to digitized content made available by libraries, archives and museums

HathiTrust

A repository for digital collections. Items in the public domain (works published before 1923) are freely accessible online.

Internet Archive

A digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Includes digitized books, periodicals, media, and more.

Internet Archive