Guide to Online Primary Sources: Activism

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.

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.

International set of primary sources, supporting materials, video, and archives telling the story of this community and its contributions.

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 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.

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.