American Radicalism Collection

Image
Annotation

This website contains 129 pamphlets, documents, and newsletters produced by or relevant to radical movements. Groups represented by one to 30 documents include the American Indian Movement; Asian Americans; the Black Panthers; the Hollywood Ten; the Ku Klux Klan, the IWW, and the Students for a Democratic Society. Additional situations covered include the Rosenberg case, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Scottsboro Boys. Additional topics include birth control and the events at Wounded Knee. This is a small but useful resource on radicalism, political movements, and rhetoric.

Studs Terkel: Conversations with America

Image
Annotation

Created to honor Studs Terkel, the noted oral historian, radio host, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, this website makes available more than 400 audio clips of interviews Terkel conducted over 50 years. The seven galleries explore a variety of subjects, including organized labor, the 1929 stock market crash, New Deal programs, World War II, Hiroshima, folk music, race relations, politics, and urban life in Chicago.

The interviews present well-known figures as well as ordinary voices, such as people traveling by train to the March on Washington in 1963. Complementing these interviews is a 55-minute video interview with Terkel in which he emphasizes the importance of accurate knowledge about the past. An educational section addresses the use of oral history in the classroom. This well-designed site is valuable for studying the Great Depression, World War II, race relations, and labor issues.

Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project

Image
Annotation

The long history of struggle for equal rights by various ethnic groups in Seattle, including Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, African, and Native Americans; Jews; and Latinos is documented on this website. Primary and secondary sources integrate labor rights movements with struggles for political rights, as is evident in the "special sections," that highlight the Chicano/a movement, the Black Panther Party, Filipino Cannery Unionism, the United Construction Workers Association, Communism, and the United Farm Workers. Each section brings together oral histories, documents, newspapers, and photographs that are accompanied by written and video commentary to provide historical context. The collection of more than 70 oral histories of activists is especially useful for understanding the lived experience of racism and its especially subtle workings in the Pacific Northwest. Together, these resources provide important national context for the civil rights struggle, too often understood as a solely southern phenomenon.

Truman Presidential Museum and Library

Image
Annotation

The presidency of Harry S. Truman is addressed through these hundreds of government documents, oral histories, photographs, and political cartoons. Materials cover topics including the Berlin airlift, the decision to drop the atomic bomb, desegregation of the Armed Forces, the election campaign of 1948, the Korean War, the Marshall Plan, NATO, the Truman Doctrine, Truman's Farewell Address, the recognition of the State of Israel, the United Nations, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Transcripts are available for approximately 120 oral histories conducted with members of Truman's administration and officials from other countries on the Korean War. The website also offers the full text of Truman's diary from 1947; more than 50 audio files with extracts of speeches, press conferences, and interviews; and more than 31,000 biographical photographs.

SIRIS Image Gallery

Image
Annotation

Highlights from the Smithsonian Institution are presented here, with access to a database of close to 140,000 images from Smithsonian archives and museums. The Image Gallery presents a sample of images, browsable by format, such as photographs, slides, drawings, postcards, and stereographs. Images are also organized by repository, including the Freer Gallery, the Archives Center, and the National Anthropological Archive.

"Frequently Used Images" provides a link to the most popular images, sorted by month and year. Within the Archives Center, for example, there are four collections with more than 30,000 images, including the Underwood and Underwood Glass Stereograph Collection, 1895–1921 on topics such as actors, African Americans, disasters, ethnic humor, immigration, Indians, labor, presidents, women, and World War I. The Addison N. Scurlock Collection presents more than 2,000 black-and-white images, primarily of Washington, DC, and from African American life. There are 1,500 advertisements from the Ivory Soap Advertising Collection and close to 200 postcards. All images may be searched via the "Search Images" tab.

Jewish Women's Archive

Image
Annotation

These exhibits and resources are valuable for studying American Jewish women's contributions to their communities and the wider world. Women of Valor focuses on 16 notable historic women—including Congresswoman Bella Abzug; radical Emma Goldman; philanthropist Rebecca Gratz; poet Emma Lazarus; actress Molly Picon; Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold; and nurse, settlement worker, and political leader Lillian Wald. Women Who Dared offers oral history interviews of Jewish women activists in text, audio, and video formats. Interviewees discuss activism in the context of Jewish and gender identity, values, and situations, and elucidate the path to activism, challenges, rewards, and impact. The Encyclopedia, browsable by keyword, time period, and country, includes 2,000 articles on Jewish women's history. This Week in History looks at moments in the lives of Jewish American women corresponding to the date; visitors can subscribe to this feature by RSS feed or email. On the Map pinpoints locations important to Jewish American women's history—and to Jewish American women today. Visitors can add their own locations with photos. Jewesses with Attitude, the JWA blog, features articles on Jewish American women past and present and on other topics relevant to the lives of Jewish American women today. The site has also digitized nine volumes of The American Jewess. Most recently, the Jewish Women's Archive has compiled objects, photographs, and personal accounts of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the aftermath, complete with 100 oral histories, blog postings, emails, and other firsthand accounts.

Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

Image
Annotation

Nearly 4,000 panoramic photographs of cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits, deposited as copyright submissions by more than 400 companies, are displayed on this site. Panoramic photographs were used to advertise real estate and to document groups, events, and gatherings. Images depict all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and more than 20 foreign countries and territories. Subjects include cityscapes, landscapes, group portraits, agricultural life, disasters, education, engineering, fairs and expositions, industrial scenes, military activities, performing arts, sports, and transportation. Although the images cover the period from 1851 to 1991, the collection centers on the early 20th century. The site includes a bibliography, an illustrated 1,000-word background essay on the history of panoramic photography, and an essay outlining the technicality of shooting a panoramic photograph. Four essays focus on specific photographers: George R. Lawrence (1869–1938); George N. Barnard (1819–1902); Frederick W. Brehm (1871–1950); and Miles F. Weaver (1879–1932).

USC Archival Research Center

Image
Annotation

These varied collections document the history of Los Angeles and southern California. "Digital Archives" offer more than 126,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, texts, and sound recordings in addition to exhibits. Nearly 1,200 images of artifacts from early Chinese American settlements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are available, as is the entire run of El Clamor Publico, the city's main Spanish-language newspaper from the 1850s. Photographs document Japanese American relocation during World War II and photographs, documents, and oral history audio files record Korean-American history. The archive also includes Works Projects Administration Land Use survey maps and Auto Club materials. A related exhibit, "Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future", offers collections on additional topics, including discovery and settlement, California missions, electric power, "murders, crimes, and scandals," city neighborhoods, cemeteries, Disneyland, African American gangs, and the Red Car lines.

Battle Lines: Letters from America's Wars

Image
Annotation

This annotated collection of more than 30 letters addresses the personal and political costs of war. Letters cover conflicts from the Revolutionary War to the current war in Iraq and are divided thematically into five sections: "Enlisting," "Comforts of Home," "Love," "Combat," and "The End of the War." Letters come from well-known military figures, such as Douglas MacArthur and Robert E. Lee, as well as ordinary veterans, such as Peter Kiterage, one of the 5,000 African Americans who fought in the Revolutionary War. The thematic organization allows users to chart changes and continuities over 200 years of American history. Each letter is read aloud so students can listen as well as read. In addition, a "magic lens" feature provides transcriptions over the original handwriting to help students decode the letters.

Picturing America

Image
Annotation

Twenty-seven iconic images in American history are presented here, designed specifically to encourage educators to use images as primary source documents in the classroom. The images range in time from 17th-century depictions of the Catholic mission in San Antonio to the contemporary art of Washington, DC native Martin Puryear.

Also included are the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington, "Washington Crossing the Delaware," and Hiram Powers's statue of Benjamin Franklin, as well as works by artists such as Grant Wood, George Catlin, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, and Edward Hopper, and by photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. All images are accompanied by a brief annotation providing historical context, a biography of the artist, and a list of online resources offering further contextual information, lesson plans, and classroom activities. Images enlarge to fullscreen and are searchable by artist and by theme: Leadership, Freedom & Equality, Democracy, Courage, Landscapes, and Creativity & Ingenuity.