Yet another fine production from the American Memory Collection at the Library of Congress, this site was created to celebrate the centennial of composer Aaron Copland's birth. The site offers a selection of over 1000 items and 5000 images drawn from over 400,000 items in the Copland Collection of the Library's Music Division. Items in the online exhibit include music sketches, correspondence, writings, and photographs spanning 1899-1981, but primarily drawn from the 1920s to 1950s. In addition to these items the site also includes a roughly 3000-word essay on Copland's life and works with 12 photographs of Copland and a timeline of the artist's life and accomplishments from his birth in 1900 to his death in 1990. Leonard Bernstein's 1000-word article on Copland from the 1970 High Fidelity/Musical America issue and five 300-word tributes to Copland on his 75th birthday, published in the 1975 Schwann-1 Record and Tape Guide are also included. Visitors may search the site by keyword or browse alphabetical listings of musical sketches, writings, correspondence, photographs, titles, and works. This is a useful site for students and teachers interested in the history of American music and the lives of American composers.

A selection of 84 portraits and 27 cartes de visite of prominent Americans photographed by Mathew Brady are exhibited here in a gallery and album. Visitors may also use an index of sitters to find photographs. A biographical timeline provides a sketch of Bradyí s life, a 200-word essay discusses his place in the art world of his time, and a 300-word essay describes his work during the Civil War. Portrait subjects include Daniel Webster, Clara Barton, Walt Whitman, and the actor Edwin Forrest in five different costumes. Cartes de visites present Jefferson Davis, Mary Todd Lincoln, and P.T. Barnum among others. In a glossary of ten photographic terms, visitors can read 50-100-word explanations of processes such as ambrotype and salt print. An 800-word essay with animated illustrations demonstrates the photographic process of Brady's time. The inclusion of these technical details makes this site particularly useful for research in the history of photography. May also be useful in discussing the history of celebrity.

This site is based on the 1997 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery featuring 20 portraits from the Harmon Foundation Collection. Real estate developer William E. Harmon (1862-1928) "one of the many white Americans who expressed his interest in the artistic achievements of black Americans during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s," established the Harmon Foundation in New York City in 1922 intending to "recognize African American achievements, not only in the fine arts but also in business, education, farming, literature, music, race relations, religious service and science." The portraits included in this exhibit were originally exhibited by the Harmon Foundation in 1944 "with the express goal of reversing racial intolerance, ignorance and bigotry by illustrating the accomplishments of contemporary African Americans. Each portrait is accompanied by a brief biographical sketch of its subject.

Based on an exhibit of the same name, this website provides a look at the Detroit Publishing Company (DPC) photographs of the Western United States from 1895 to 1924. The site is arranged for easy browsing into nine sections: DPC History, "How did they do it?," Cityscapes, Everyday Life, Foreign Views, Getting Around, Michigan Views, Nature, and Workplace; and each section contains 24 to 38 photographs. The first section covers the early years of the company and provides information about DPC photographers and the creation and distribution of pictures. The everyday life photos include images of cowboys shooting craps, children in Chinatown, and an African American Emancipation Day celebration in Richmond, VA. The foreign views section consists of snapshots taken in Mexico, Venezuela, the Bahamas, and Switzerland. Roughly 40 photographs focus on the state of Michigan. The nature images, the most popular of the company's photographs, are majestic and many of them fed the growing tourist industry. The section of workplace images rounds out this site and includes harvest scenes, loggers in Michigan, smelters, oyster pickers in Louisiana, and cotton gin workers. For those interested in the history of photography, this easily navigable site is a valuable resource.

Produced as a part of a series of articles on black history titled "Through Spokane's Eyes: Moments in Black History," this site is a civil rights oral history project organized around the memories of men and women from Spokane, WA. Visitors can listen to of eight oral history interviews. They include an account by Jerrelene Williamson who compares the civil rights movement in Spokane to events in Alabama. Like most of the interviews, Williamson's dialogue is approximately 10 minutes in length. Emelda and Manuel Brown discuss their experiences with racial prejudice within the context of raising a family in Spokane in the 1960s. Their interview (32 minutes) is the second longest within the collection. Like many others within the project, Clarence Freeman shares his remembrances of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Sam Minnix and Verda Lofton describe the local civil rights demonstrations, and Flip Schulke recounts his experiences as a photographer in the south during the 1960s. His interview includes a discussion of James Meredith's admission into the University of Mississippi and at 45 minutes, is the longest. Alvin Pitmon talks about the desegregation of Arkansas schools and Nancy Nelson sings two civil rights spirituals, "My Lord, What a Morning" and "Let Us Break Bread Together."

A search engine allows users to search interviews by keyword and across database topics. This site will be of great interest to those interested in the history of civil rights in the United States.

This is essentially a digital tribute to the Gershwin brothers, George and Ira. The site explores their musical and lyrical legacies as one of the most famous songwriting duos in American history. The site features playable audio files of 58 of the Gershwins' best-known songs, performed by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Harry Connick, Jr. In the History section, visitors can view a timeline of the brother's lives, complete with photographs, or read detailed profiles (approximately 2,500 words) of both George and Ira, separately and together. An Anthology highlights 10 selected films and 10 shows, while References provides additional resources in print, music, and digital media.

This website contains articles and extracts about early radio and related technologies in the United States from 1897-1927. It is organized chronologically and divided into 24 sections. Each section is a long-form essay, containing numerous hyperlinks to reproductions or transcriptions of original primary documents, including documents relating to the efforts to provide entertainment and news over the telephone in the first decades of the 20th century. Essays vary in length, most 1,000 - 2,000 words, and many are original essays by the site's creator. The first section offers an overview of the individuals, activities, and technical advances that characterize the early 20th century. The subsequent sections include essays entitled "The Electric Telegraph" and "Radio at Sea." The latter argues that navigation was the first major use of radio and it helped to reduce the isolation of ships and save lives. There are also essays about the early development of the radio industry and the radio during World War I. "Early Government Regulations, 1903-1946" contains 18 documents covering early international and national control of radio and the final section on U.S. radio history covers such topics as "Washington D.C. AM Station History" and "Mystique of the Three-Letter Callsigns" about U.S. radio and television station call letters.

The site is a fascinating place for those interested in the early history and development of the radio and its subsequent effects on related technologies.

This site is dedicated to the legacy of Leonard Bernstein, one of America's foremost conductors of classical music in the 20th century. The "Life's Works" section consists of the Red Book," a comprehensive listing of his many compositions, a 124-page discography that catalogs 826 of Bernstein's recordings, a 1,500 word biography, and a timeline. In "The Studio," the other main section, there are 13 black-and-white photographs of Bernstein, his family, friends, and colleagues and 24 excerpts of interviews, writings, and speeches of and by Bernstein. Users can also view lyrics of six songs from "A Wonderful Town" and handwritten and typed draft scripts from the "Young Peoples' Concerts."

Highlights of this site are ten personal letters dating from 1943, four telegrams, including one from Humphrey Bogart to Bernstein, and eight images of Bernstein's preliminary notes for various musical and educational projects including an original image of Bernstein's personal copy of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet with his annotations in the margin. Users may also view 14 video clips from films and television programs, including seven home videos filmed in the early 1940s and Bernstein's well-known "Norton Lectures" at Harvard. This site is rounded out with a collection of 20 audio clips from the conductor's many recordings. Those with a passion for American music will find that this site has a wealth of information. For the novice, however, its cluttered presentation is difficult to navigate.

Documenting the colonial experience of settlers in Plimoth, MA, this site contains several brief articles on Puritanism, traditional thanking for harvest, the Wampanoag, the formation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, Thanksgiving menu regionalism and commonality, and primary source quotations. A major focus of the site is New England Thanksgiving. A somewhat longer article focuses on the menu of the original Thanksgiving. Explore the online activity about What really happened at the First Thanksgiving? that invites you to be the historian and explore multiple perspectives.

A virtual tour of the Plimoth Plantation, which requires a free browser plug-in, allows visitors to observe the grounds as well as historical re-enactors and interpreters. Although the site has relatively few primary sources, the exhibit is useful as an introduction to New England studies.

These materials come from a museum with approximately 4,000 pieces of racist memorabilia donated from Pilgrim's personal collection. Envisioned as an educational resource for scholars and students, this site contains most of the images within the museum collection, including sheet music, ashtrays, children's book covers, salt and pepper shakers, postcards, dolls, and matchbooks. The exhibit is divided thematically into 11 sections, including racist cartoons; Jezebel stereotypes; the tragic mulatto; and caricatures of the brute, picanninny, nigger, tom, mammy, coon, and golliwog. Each section includes a scholarly essay that provides historical context for the anti-black caricatures. For those interested in further research, the summaries (most between 2,000 and 4,000 words) offer extensive footnotes with primary, secondary, and online sources.

Of the 30 images within "The Brute Caricatures," users will find the covers of Charles Carrolls' The Negro a Beast, published in 1900, and D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation of interest. There are 142 picanninny images, including Buckwheat and the cover of the children's book "Little Sambo." There are images of 50 "Uncle Tom," 87 "Mammy," and 90 "Jezebel" caricatures, both cinematic and commercial. More than 100 pictures and objects bear the appellation "nigger," and 118 19th- and early-20th-century racist cartoons (2 Quicktime and 2 RealMedia) are available. The exhibit includes a radio interview with Dr. Pilgrim, along with links to 13 scholarly essays and relevant newspaper articles. The site will be of special interest to those researching the history of racist memorabilia.