Center for Working-Class Studies

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Introduces an organization begun in 1996 that "creates social spaces for civic and academic conversations on working-class life and culture and its intersections with other identities and serves as a clearinghouse for information on working-class culture, issues, and pedagogy." The site presents information about the Center, its outreach programs and electronic discussion network; a 1,000-word essay defining working-class studies and commenting on recent trends; six course syllabi; online student exhibitions for a course on "Working in Youngstown," which deals with the history and representations of work in "Steeltown, U.S.A." and throughout the U.S.; 88 abstracts of papers presented at the 1999 conference on "Class, Identity, and Nation"; 84 partially annotated links to related resources, including 24 for museums on working-class and labor history; and a bibliography organized into 24 thematic categories such as "Working-Class Fiction," "Class as Culture," "Class Perception in the U.S.," and "Class and Sexuality." A useful site for introducing students to discussions of class and labor issues in American history.

Say it Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches

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This small website assembles transcripts and audio recordings of 12 important speeches by prominent African Americans of the late 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. These include: Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Mary McLeod Bethune, Dick Gregory, Fannie Lou Hamer, Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, Jr., Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Clarence Thomas, and Barack Obama.

Topics include Washington's speech to the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition, Bethune's 1939 speech "What Does Democracy Mean to Me?," a 1966 speech by Carmichael at U.C. Berkeley, and King's 1968 "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon delivered in Memphis just before his assassination. The speech by Marcus Garvey is his only known recording. Each speech is accompanied by a brief introduction. The site provides 40 links to related websites.

Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection

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This small site, part a larger collection, offers a music archive dealing primarily with traditional New Orleans jazz. Composed of photographs, audio recordings, and audio interviews of musicians and bands that were primarily active in New Orleans, the collection is currently composed of more than 1,000 total items, including more than 380 audio recordings. Of particular interest are the 160 Louis Armstrong items. The collection can be searched by keyword. The site's authors plan to make additional items available as they are digitized and catalogued. A useful resource for those studying the history of jazz or jazz culture.

New Jersey Public Records and Archives

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For historians researching New Jersey, this site's main interest will be its "state archives." "Catalog" provides access to nearly 200 pre-established searches on the archive's manuscript series, genealogical holdings, business and corporate records, cultural resources, and maps. Topics include military conflicts, society and economics, transportation, public works agencies, and photographic collections, as well as state, county, municipal, and federal government records. The other major feature consists of eight image collections with themes that include New Jersey Civil War soldiers, Spanish-American War Infantry Officers, Spanish-American War Naval Officers, Gettysburg Monuments, and views of the Morris Canal. The archives site also includes a searchable index of New Jersey Supreme Court cases, a transcription of New Jersey's 1776 constitution, and a table summarizing the holdings of the state archives. This site is a useful aid for researching the history and culture of New Jersey.

Historic Missouri Newspaper Project

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This website provides a searchable archive of 14 historic Missouri newspapers. The newspapers available are The Columbia Missourian (1929, 1966-1985), Palladium (April 1907), the The Missouri Republican (July 1865), the St. Louis Christian Advicate (1857-1858, 1860, 1866-1870, 1874-1879), the St. Louis Globe Democrat (1875), the Daily Evening Herald (1835), The Far West (1836), the Liberty Weekly Tribune (1846-1848, 1850-1883), The Liberty Banner (March 1844, one issue), The Phelps County New Era (1875-1880), The Rolla Express (1860-1863, 1865, 1868, 1872-1873), The Rolla New era (1880-1897), the M.S.U. Independent (1894-1905), and The Hannibal Courier (October 1935; January and August 1988).

For many of the newspapers only several months of the years indicated are available. The full text of all available newspaper issues is searchable, and a range of keyword search options are offered. The user can search an individual publication or all newspapers in the archive. All content can be searched or the user can limit the search to articles, pictures, or advertisements. Newspapers are displayed by page and a rollover feature highlights individual articles that can then be read in a separate window. This archive is a useful resource for those researching the history of Missouri in the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Jacob Lawrence: Over the Line

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Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000) examined the African American experience through art. This website was created in 2001 to accompany an exhibition exploring his life and work. The website (with a flash version and an html version) provides a straightforward account of Lawrence's life and work accompanied by images.

The site is presented in three parts, "Beginnings," "The Young Artist," and "Over the Line," each organized as a sequence of pages consisting of short descriptions (50 words) and associated images. There are two short audio clips of Lawrence talking about Harlem and color. The images are relatively small and cannot be enlarged.

Life After the Holocaust: Stories of Holocaust Survivors After The War

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This website presents the stories of six Holocaust survivors—three men, three women; five born in Poland and one in Czechoslovakia—who immigrated to the United States after World War II. Visitors can either listen to the six 30-minute interviews in their entirety, or listen to interview clips surrounding six themes: "starting over," "arriving in New York," "living with the past," "speaking out," "faith, guilt, and responsibility," and "telling their children." Many of the survivors begin by talking about their experiences before the war, and proceed to explain the complexities of starting over in the United States after the war.

Each interview is interspersed with narration and accompanied by photographs and other personal memorabilia, helping visitors better contextualize the narrators' stories. Audio files and interview transcripts are downloadable, making this website's resources useful in classroom settings, as well as to a broader public interested in understanding the aftermath of the Holocaust through deeply personal accounts.

Travel, Tourism, and Urban Growth in Greater Miami: A Digital Archive

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This site uses essays, a detailed timeline, and an image gallery to examine the growth of Miami and the history of its travel and tourism industry. An essay by Project Director Bachin provides an introduction to the website. The site has seven main thematic sections: advertising, architecture, environment, land use, migration, tourism, and transportation. Each section is introduced by a short three-to-five page essay and features a chronology and an annotated bibliography. There is also a searchable image gallery with more than 590 subjects, many with multiple images. The visitor can browse the gallery by subject, location, resource (such as aerial views, photographs, or postcards), or collection.

The site also offers an overall chronology (1823-2000), divided into sections for 1800s to WWI, WWI to 1930s, WWII to the 1950s, and the 1960s to the 1990s. The chronology can also be viewed by 18 themes such as civil rights, the Great Depression, hurricanes, land use, migration, and tourism. The overall annotated bibliography lists more than 90 books, links to 16 related websites, and 14 related archives. This site offers outstanding resources for those teaching or researching the history of Miami and South Florida and should also be of interest to anyone working on 20th-century urban and business history.

Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage

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The cultural heritage of Maryland is readily accessible here through thousands of digitized documents, maps, and images arranged into more than 40 collections and two exhibits. Baltimore's native son and prominent early 20th-century journalist H.L. Mencken is featured through a collection of 19 portraits, artifacts, and letters. Edgar Allen Poe, who lived in Baltimore late in his life, can be glimpsed through 18 portraits, drafts, and letters. Another collection offers digital copies of primary sources from the War of 1812, including an original draft of the "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Other collections include photographs of African American life, a selection of sports-related items, photographs and watercolor paintings of old houses and churches in Queen Anne's County, vintage photographs of Baltimore streets and street cars, and a series of photographs awaiting identification from collection users. Ample historical context, including library donation information, is provided for all collections. The website's blog will be useful for those interested in library sciences, preservation, and digital archiving.

The Adoption History Project

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In 1851, Massachusetts passed the first law recognizing adoption as a legal and social operation. Since then, adoption has had a rich history in the United States, documented at this website through close to 200 reports, writings, letters, adoption narratives, and other documents. Users unfamiliar with adoption history might begin by exploring the detailed timeline that traces adoption history from 1851 to 2000, when Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 eliminating the process of naturalization for international adoptions. Moving on to the Topics in Adoption History section, with in-depth explanations of orphan trains, proxy adoptions, infertility, child welfare, and eugenics, will help build historical context. The Document Archive and Adoption Science sections boast documents from the late 1800s to the present by notables such as Pearl Buck, adoptees searching for information on their biological parents, and court decisions on adoption throughout the 20th century.