The Metal Trades Council Union alliance in Seattle shut down the shipyards on February 6, 1919, in hopes of forcing a promised pay increase following the strict price controls set during World War I. After the Metal Trades Council obtained the support of Seattle's Central Labor Alliance, more than 65,000 Seattle workers staged a sympathy walkout, creating what has come to be known as the first "general strike" in U.S. history, and laying the foundation for labor unrest in the nation's steel, coal, and meatpacking industries in the years that followed.

This website documents the history of this strike through a large collection of primary and secondary source materials.

A four-minute video introduction, containing original film footage from 1919, is a useful place to begin for those unfamiliar with Seattle's labor history.

The website also includes contemporary and more recent newspaper articles, including more than 180 articles from Seattle's major newspapers covering the February 1919 events; 15 oral histories; more than 30 photographs of labor activity in Seattle, prominent union members, and strike activities; as well as research reports on the strike by history students at the University of Washington.

Curated by Carl Smith, Professor of English and American Studies at Northwestern University in a collaborative effort with the Chicago Historical Society, this rich site provides an online exhibit commemorating one of the most notorious incidents in late-nineteenth-century labor history, the Haymarket Affair. On May 4, 1886, two workers were killed in a struggle between police and locked-out union members at the McCormick Reaper factory. On May 5, 1886, someone threw a dynamite bomb into a group of Chicago policemen sent to control the ensuing protest, killing seven. This site is an online exhibit of selected materials from the Chicago Historical Society's Haymarket Affair Digital Collection. Organized in the form of a drama, the site contains a prologue, five acts, and an epilogue, all arranged chronologically.

The prologue, "Whither America," covers the period between Chicago's Great Fire in 1871 through 1880, with emphasis on the railroad strike of 1877 and other developments in the radicalization of American workers. Act I, "Subterranean Fire," discusses the widening class divisions and resulting rising level of violence in America. Act II, "Let Your Tragedy be Enacted Here," recounts the demonstrations of 1886, the protestors' meeting, and the bombing. Act III, "Toils of the Law," covers the legal proceedings beginning with the "red scare" and police "witch hunt" following the bombing and continuing through the sentencing of the convicted anarchists in October 1886. Act IV, "Voice of People," relates the legal and public appeals ending with the executions of 1887. Act V, "Raising the Dead," moves from the funerals of the executed men to Governor John P. Altgeld's pardon of the surviving defendants in 1893.

The epilogue, "Drama Without End," deals with the contested heritage of Haymarket, including centennial events in 1986. Each part consists of a 500-word interpretive essay and topical sections including a total of over 50 visual materials, such as images of artifacts, photographs, and engravings of the people involved in the Haymarket Affair, and over 30 facsimiles of selected manuscripts and printed materials. Each "Act" contains a final section that includes full-text transcriptions of documents from the Haymarket Digital Collection. The site also includes virtual tours of the Haymarket area and of Forest Home Cemetery, where a monument to the convicted men is located, and audio recordings of contemporary labor songs. This site is beautifully contextualized, well-presented, and easy to navigate. It contains a keyword search engine as well as a table of contents.

More than 240 items dealing with African-American history from collections of the Library of Congress, including books, government documents, manuscripts, maps, musical scores, plays, films, and recordings. The exhibition explores black America's quest for political, social, and economic equality from slavery through the mid-20th century. Organized into nine chronological periods covering the following topics: slavery; free blacks in the antebellum period; antislavery movements; the Civil War and African-American participation in the military; Reconstruction political struggles, black exodus from the South, and activism in the black church; the "Booker T. Washington era" of progress in the creation of educational and political institutions during a period of violent backlash; World War I and the postwar period, including the rise of the Harlem Renaissance; the Depression, New Deal, and World War II; and the Civil Rights era. Each section includes a 500-word overview and annotations of 100 words in length for each object displayed. In addition to documenting the struggle for freedom and civil rights, the exhibit includes celebratory material on contributions of artists, writers, performers, and sports figures. Valuable for students and teachers looking for a well-written and documented guide for exploring African-American history.

An archive of nearly 300 images and approximately 500 text files relating to the post-WWI Red Scare, created by Robert Leo Klein, the Web Coordinator and Digital Resources Developer at the William and Anita Newman Library, Baruch College, CUNY. The weekly compendium, The Literary Digest, constitutes "the primary source of material for this database." Klein notes, in describing his site, that "because the anti-red hysteria was so emblematic of the time" "we use it in the context of this database as a short-hand way of expressing the whole period." Whether or not this interpretation succeeds, this site is an impressive source for first-hand documents. Users will find them organized chronologically, as well as by more than 100 subject headings. No background text is offered, but students curious about the history of antiradicalism will discover here a rewarding presentation.

In the 19th century the "Underground Railroad", a secret network of Northern abolitionists, guided hundreds of escaped slaves to Canada and freedom. This creative, interactive site places visitors in the shoes of a Maryland slave pondering escape to Canada in 1850. The visitor is allowed to choose whether to escape or remain enslaved; if they choose to escape they are led into one of the Underground Railroad escape routes through Wilmington, Delaware, and Philadelphia to Rochester, New York, and across Lake Erie into Canada. Along the way they are introduced to several prominent abolitionists such as Harriet Tubman, Quaker businessman Thomas Garrett, and escaped slave Frederick Douglass. Some of the stops along the escape route are accompanied by audio clips of African-American spirituals, bloodhounds in pursuit of escaped slaves, and the sound of a train. The site also includes a map of Underground Railroad routes; a timeline of African slavery in the New World from 1500 to 1865; and portraits and brief (100-word) biographies of 12 major figures in the Underground Railroad, such as Lucretia Mott, John Whittier, and William Still. A link to classroom ideas provides nine class projects for high school students. There are also links to seven related websites and a bibliography of 18 scholarly works. A forum allows visitors to post comments or questions about the Underground Railroad or the website, but because the forum link is not monitored or edited the discussion threads' usefulness is uneven. Though this innovative site contains no primary documents, it is an ideal beginning for students interested in slavery and abolition and for teachers seeking background and classroom project ideas on the Underground Railroad.

This archive contains material related to "the causes, conduct, and consequences of the U.S. Civil War." The collection contains more than 220 books, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, and other printed material from 1830 to 1880. The entire archive can be browsed by author, date of publication, title, or subject. Abstracts of the titles are available. Using a built-in viewer, each document can be viewed in its original format (or downloaded in PDF form), and visitors can zoom in or out.

Visitors may browse issues of William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator, peruse the 1852 Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention, or view dozens of Thomas Nast cartoons. Finally, visitors can also search the entire archive by keyword, subject, graphic element, or date. Visitors looking for comprehensive Civil War, Abolition, or Reconstruction sites will find more complete collections elsewhere; but this site's convenience, as well as its collection of early-19th-century tracts, make this 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.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy's trip to South Africa in June 1966 to protest that country's system of apartheid and support efforts to combat it is amply documented on this site with texts, audio files, film clips, and photographs. The site provides texts of the five speeches delivered by Kennedy during the visit—for three of these, full audio files are provided. Also offers texts of 13 additional speeches—from South African students and political leaders, as well as American leaders—with six available in audio format. Background annotations of up to 100 words accompany all texts. A newspapers section on the press coverage of the visit provides nine articles from U.S. newspapers and 15 articles from South African newspapers. A magazines section provides seven articles about the visit, including a Look magazine article about the trip written by the senator; and a cartoon section highlights 12 political cartoons. The site also provides 13 related documents, and more sources can be found in the "Resources" section. These include the "Black Christ" painting that caused uproar in 1962, 11 posters of Nelson Mendela, 11 annotated political cartoons, two national anthems for comparison, and 19 recommended books and links to 19 relevant sites.

An overview essay of 3,500 words describes the "enormous impact" of Kennedy's visit and illuminates "the manner in which he subtly challenged and undermined some of the pillars of apartheid ideology and mythology." A study materials section is designed for use in high schools and colleges with questions for class discussion and a feedback questionnaire. Additionally, the site's audio and video streaming now works with Realplayer and Mediaplayer, and the video streaming also now works with with Quicktime. A valuable site for studying the history of race relations in South Africa and the United States.

Presents transcriptions of oral history interviews—with selected accompanying audio files—of five students who participated during World War II in Brooklyn College's Farm Labor Project.

The students, most of whom were children of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland and were committed to radical politics, journeyed upstate during the summer to work on farms in order to support the war effort. The site organizes excerpts of the words of the five interviewees—four women and one man—into four broad sections covering their background and youth, campus life, life on the farm, and life after the project.

These sections are further divided into 20 subsections covering such topics as family life, social influences, politics, working conditions on the farm, protests against a "capitalist" farmer, interactions with locals, and later life. Individual excerpts range in length from one sentence to 750 words. Audio files are provided for 23 of the excerpts.

The site also includes 12 photos from the project, a timeline, and a syllabus for an undergraduate-level course in Oral History Theory and Practice.

A second group of oral histories addresses the shutdown of Brooklyn College's newspaper during the McCarthy era as well as related biographies, contextual essays, and primary documents. The site will be valuable to those studying student life, radical culture, American Jewish history, and homefront experiences during World War II.

An exhibit of 60 images, mostly photographs, and a 2,500-word essay that presents a social history of deaf community life in the U.S. from the early 19th century to the present. Covers education, the development of American Sign Language, the "silent press," deaf people in the workplace, media portrayals, deaf clubs, activism, and technological developments. Also includes material on a few historical figures such as the Reverend Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alexander Graham Bell. Hosted by the National Deaf Life Museum, the website also has links to educational resources and the Through Deaf Eyes documentary film produced by Florentine Films/Hott Productions and WETA, Washington, DC, in association with Gallaudet University. A solid introduction to the history of deaf people in America.