This project preserves records and memories of activism in the United States that supported the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s.
The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968, at a time of social change and protest and the civil rights movement. AIM used the press and media to present its own unvarnished message to the American public. This collection includes the extensive FBI documentation on the evolution of AIM as an organization of social protest, documentation on the 1973 Wounded Knee Stand-off, materials collected by the Extremist Intelligence Section. These primary sources provide insight into the motives, actions, and leadership of AIM and the development of Native American radicalism, as well as the attitudes of the US government towards this organization.
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.
Topics in this resource include: the federal surveillance of African Americans between 1920-1984, the papers of Amir Baraka, reports and correspondence of the U.S. Military Intelligence Division, 1918-1941 with respect to China, and documentation related to the Minutemen,1963-1969.
Collection of American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals annual reports, journals, scrapbooks, photos, and publications since its 1866 founding.
Offers oral histories, newspaper clippings, local government documents and photographs related to Baltimore's riots following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Presents primary documents and visual material to "help expand knowledge and understanding about the historical experience of people with disabilities in the United States."
This site documents various aspects of the Women's Liberation Movement in the United States, focusing specifically on the radical origins of this movement during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Items range from radical theoretical writings to humourous plays to the minutes of an actual grassroots group.
Examines selected materials from the Chicago Historical Society's Haymarket Affair Digital Collection. The Dramas of Haymarket interprets these materials and places them in historical context, drawing on many other items from the Historical Society's extensive resources.
Documents the historical formation and cultural foundations of the movement to conserve and protect America's natural heritage. The collection consists of Federal statutes and Congressional resolutions, additional legislative documents, excerpts from the Congressional Globe and the Congressional Record, Presidential proclamations, prints and photographs, historic manuscripts and motion pictures.
"Seeks to document examples of street art from around the world that have emerged in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd as part of an ongoing movement demanding social justice and equality."
Digital primary sources modules (50) drawn mostly from U.S. archival collections.
African American Police League Records, 1961-1988
American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971
American Politics and Society from Kennedy to Watergate
American Politics in the Early Cold War—Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, 1945-1961
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records, Supplement
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 1
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century, Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part 2
CIA Cold War Research Reports and Records on Communism in China and Eastern Europe
Confederate Military Manuscripts and Records of Union Generals and the Union Army
Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, 1960-1969, Africa and the Middle East
Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, 1960-1969, Asia
Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files, 1960-1969, Europe and Latin America
Creation of Israel: British Foreign Office Correspondence on Palestine and Transjordan, 1940-1948
FBI Confidential Files and Radical Politics in the U.S., 1945-1972
Immigration: Records of the INS, 1880-1930
Japanese American Incarceration: Records of the War Relocation Authority, 1942-1946
Labor Unions in the U.S., 1862-1974: Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO, and AFL-CIO
Law and Society since the Civil War: American Legal Manuscripts from the Harvard Law School Library
Margaret Sanger Papers: Smith College Collections and Collected Documents
NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files
NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files and Youth Department Files
NAACP Papers: Special Subjects
NAACP Papers: The NAACP’s Major Campaigns—Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces
NAACP Papers: The NAACP’s Major Campaigns--Legal Department Files
NAACP Papers: The NAACP’s Major Campaigns—Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
Nazi Looted Art and Assets: Records on the Post World War II Restitution Process
New Deal and World War II: President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Office Files and Records of Federal Agencies
Office of Strategic Services (OSS)-State Department Intelligence and Research Reports, 1941-1961
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency Records, 1853-1999
Progressive Era: Reform, Regulation and Rights
Progressive Era: Robert M. La Follette Papers
Progressive Era: Voices of Reform (1875-1945)
Reconstruction and Military Government after the Civil War
Records of the Children's Bureau, 1912-1969
Revolutionary War and Early America: Collections from the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1721-1860
Slavery and the Law
Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries
Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Law and Order in 19th Century America
Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records, Part 2
Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Part 1
Southern Women and their Families in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Holdings of the Southern Historical Collection
Struggle for Women's Rights: Organizational Records, 1880-1990
Students for a Democratic Society, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement
Temperance and Prohibition Movement, 1830-1933
Thomas A. Edison Papers
U.S. Diplomatic Post Records, 1914-1945
U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, 1911-1944
Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960–1975
Women at Work during World War II: Rosie the Riveter and the Women's Army Corps
Women’s Studies Manuscript Collections from the Schlesinger Library: Voting Rights, National Politics, and Reproductive Rights
Workers, Labor Unions, and the American Left in the 20th Century: Federal Records
World War I: British Foreign Office Political Correspondence
World War I: Records of the American Expeditionary Forces, and Diplomacy in the World War I Era
World War II: U.S. Documents on Planning, Operations, Intelligence, Axis War Crimes, and Refugees
Collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals 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.
The Labadie Collection is the oldest research collection of radical history in the United States, documenting a wide variety of international social protest movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is named for anarchist and labor organizer Joseph Antoine Labadie (1850-1933). Available here are digitized pamphlets and photos from the collection; some are restricted to University of Michigan users only.
The Minutemen was a militant anti-Communist organization formed in the early 1960s. The Minutemen believed that Communism would soon take over all of America. The group armed themselves, and was preparing to take back the country from the "subversives." The Minutemen organized themselves into small cells and stockpiled weapons for an anticipated counter-revolution. This collection sets the stage for the political evolution of the contemporary militia movement by detailing the philosophies and activities of one early example of the changed definition of "militia". Primary sources from the FBI detail the philosophy, leader, plans and programs of the Minutemen organization.
Documenting and saving the digital evidence and stories from worldwide Occupy protests that began in September 2011. Created/maintained by volunteers working together at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and with other members of the George Mason University community.
Offers digitized materials that help document the Occupy Movement's meetings and protests. Includes flyers, pamphlets, postcards, articles, and more. Created/maintained by the Occupy Archive Team at Case Western Reserve University.
This collection shows images of political buttons addressing issues of anarchism, civil liberties (with an emphases on racial minorities), socialism, communism, colonialism and imperialism, American labor history through the 1930s, the IWW, the Spanish Civil War, sexual freedom, women's liberation, gay liberation, the underground press, and student protest.
More than 2000 letters, books, newspapers, and other material from the Post family, dating 1817-1918. Primary subjects are abolition, women’s suffrage and Spiritualism.
Congressional hearings, including witness testimonies, from 1967-1970. This link points to part 1 of the hearings; you can enter "Riots, Civil and Criminal Disorders" in the top search bar to find other parts of the hearings.
Collection of "political artifacts from the 1960s-era, collected and saved over the years by activist, photographer and filmmaker, Roz Payne." Collections include underground press, small press publications, leaflets/flyers/broadsides/article reprints, posters/graphic design, buttons, photographs, objects, and newsreel films.
Thousands of pages of letters, diaries and oral histories, plus posters, broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements, audio and video materials. Also interpretive essays by historians.
The Student Activism collection is intended to serve as a scholarly bridge from the extensive history of student protest in the United States to the study of today's vibrant, continually unfolding actions. The collection captures the voices of students across the great range of protest, political actions, and equal-rights advocacy from the 20th and early 21st century United States. The primary sources are broad-based across time, geography, and political viewpoint — from conservative to anarchist.
This collection of primary source documents from the FBI Library sheds light on the history of the Freedom Riders, civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated South in the summer of 1961. Their activities tested the US Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia, which outlawed racial segregation in the restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. At a time when Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South, the Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States.
Database of digitized books, images, documents, essays and bibiographies documenting women's reform activities in the U.S., mostly from the 19th and 20th centuries.
