United States History Primary Sources on the Web - 1946-

Updated: 04/07

American Presidency Project
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
The American Presidency Project consolidates, codes, and organizes into a single searchable database: The Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Washington - Taft (1789-1913); The Public Papers of the Presidents:Hoover to Bush (1929-1993); The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents:Clinton - G.W. Bush (1993-2007). The archive contains over 72,000 searchable documents on the American presidency including Executive Orders; State of the Union Addresses; Proclamations; State of the Union Messages; Press Conferences; Inaugural Addresses; Saturday Radio Addresses; Addresses to Congress; Addresses to Nation and more.

American Radicalism
http://www.lib.msu.edu/coll/main/spec_col/radicalism/
An online collection of digital texts and images from the American Radicalism collection at Michigan State University. Among the many subject areas included are the Hollywood Ten, Black Panthers, Birth Control, I.W.W., Wounded Knee and Students for a Democratic Society.

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minesota
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/
The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has many documents focusing on Nazi Germany's war against the Jews. It also provides information and sources about more recent acts of genocide, which have taken place in the twentieth century, utilizing resources of the University of Minnesota and other experts in local colleges.

Cold War International History Project
http://wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&fuseaction=topics.home
"The Cold War International History Project disseminates new information and perspectives on the history of the Cold War, in particular new findings from previously inaccessible sources on "the other side" -- the former Communist world."

Documents Relating to American Foreign Policy: The Cold War
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/coldwar.htm
This site, created and maintained by Professor Vincent Ferraro of Mount Holyoke College, contained many documents related to the Cold War, including government memos, reports, and speeches from 1945-1992.

Foreign Relations of the United States, Electronic Facsimile
http://libtext.library.wisc.edu/FRUS/
This digital facsimile of Foreign Relations of the United States is a project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago Libraries. The facsimile consists of an incomplete run from 1863-1958. with missing volumes being added as they can be acquired and processed. The missing volumes are scattered throughout the series. The primary gaps cover the Reconstruction era of 1865-1872, the late 1880's to early 1890's, 1925-1937, and most of the 1950's. Nonetheless, this ongoing project provides access to important documents not available elsewhere on the Web.

Foreign Relations of the United States
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/c1716.htm
The series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. Produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian, the Website offers access to the series volumes covering the Kennedy and Johnson presidencies. Other accessible volumes are from the Nixon/Ford administration, Truman and Eisenhower.

Historical Census Browser
Http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/index.html
Information compiled from the US Census from 1790-1960, produced by the University of Virginia Library. The information was compiled from a project by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

In the First Person
http://www.inthefirstperson.com/firp/index.aspx
A comprehensive archive that provides in-depth field and keyword searches across all letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies within Alexander Street Press databases and scholar materials available for free on the Web. The resources span over 400 years from the 1550s to 2000s.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
http://www.archives.gov/index.html
The National Archives is the largest repository of federal, regional and local historic documents in the United States. The site contains hundreds of thousands of digitized documents with many different finding aids. The finding aids have been categorized under several headings: Archival Research Catalog (ARC); Access to Archival Databases (AAD); Guide to Federal Records; and more.

National Security Archive
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html
The National Security Archive, a non-profit institution housed at George Washington University's Gelman Library, is a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as a public interest law firm defending and expanding public access to government information through the FOIA, and an indexer and publisher of the documents. The Archive's holdings include more than two million pages of accessioned material in over 200 separate collections. Searching is by keyword, using Google, of the title and descriptive essay on the documents. The site also offers National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Books providing online access to critical declassified records on issues including U.S. national security, foreign policy, diplomatic and military history, intelligence policy, and more. The Briefing books are categorized in nine subject areas: Europe; Latin America; Nuclear History; China and East Asia; U.S. Intelligence; Middle East and South Asia; The September 11th Sourcebooks; Humanitarian Interventions; and Government Secrecy.

Primary Sources of the Women's Movement, 1960 to Present: The "Second Wave" and Beyond
http://scholar.alexanderstreet.com/display/WASM/Home+Page
A scholarly website hosted by three scholar-editors and offering analysis about feminist activism and theories. The 150 site participants also offer unpublished papers, chronologies, images, oral histories, links to external Web sites, book reviews, reviews of new Web resources, syllabi, and other materials concerning the Women's Movement.

Professor Vincent Ferraro’s Homepage
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/feros-pg.htm
Professor Ferraro is The Ruth C. Lawson Professor of International Politics Mount Holyoke College, scroll down the opening page of his website to his "documents" section to locate primary source material on numerous twentieth century topics such as the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, US foreign policy in the 20th century, World Wars I & II, and more.

Radical America
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/radicalamerica/
This site contains full-text access to Radical America magazine from its first issue in 1967 to 1980. While the magazine continued until 1999, this thirteen year period was its heyday. The magazine started out as a product of the campus-based New Left of the late 1960s, promoting the radicalism expounded by primarily the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the mid-1970s the magazine's focus broadened to include working-class radicalism, feminism, and gay/lesbian issues. After 1980 the magazine's departed from its original focus and ceased publication in 1999.

Thomas: Legislative Information on the Web. Library of Congress.
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdoxmainpg.html
Designed to make Federal legislative information freely available to the Internet public, this database provides a wealth of information about bills and debates before the current congress, schedules for the weekly sessions of both branch of Congress, committee information, Bill summaries back to 1973, bill texts back to 1989, Public Laws back to 1973, Roll Calls from 1990, and historical documents.

University of Oklahoma College of Law. A Chronology of U. S. Historical Documents
http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/
A listing of important legal documents pertaining to pre-colonial; 17th century; 18th century; 19th century; and 20th century United States history. The site includes inaugural addresses of U. S. presidents.

The Vietnam Archive
http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vietnamarchive/index.htm
The archive, sponsored by Texas Tech, collects and preserves the documentary record of the Vietnam War, including records of individual veterans, veterans' organizations, scholars, and other organizations or individuals who share their experiences of the war era. The Vietnam Archive also administers two projects, the Oral History Project and the Virtual Vietnam Archive.

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