This collection presents 1,305 pieces of sheet music composed by and about African Americans, ranging chronologically from antebellum minstrel shows to early 20th-century African-American musical comedies. Includes works by renowned black composers and lyricists, such as James A. Bland, Will Marion Cook, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Bert Williams, George Walker, Alex Rogers, Jesse A. Shipp, Bob Cole, James Weldon Johnson, J. Rosamond Johnson, James Reese Europe, and Eubie Blake. A "Special Presentation: The Development of an African-American Musical Theatre, 1865-1910" provides a chronological overview that allows users to explore "the emergence of African-American performers and musical troupes, first in blackface minstrelsy, and later at the beginnings of the African-American musical stage in the late 1890s."

In addition, sheet music can be studied to examine racial depictions, both visually, on sheet music covers, and in lyrics; styles of music, such as ragtime, jazz, and spirituals; and a variety of topics of interest to popular audiences, including gender relations, urbanization, and wars. Includes a useful 80-title bibliography and 15-title discography. Much of the material is disturbing due to its heavy dependence on racial caricatures; however, students can gain insight into racial attitudes through an informed use of this site.

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.

This website, maintained by graduate student Rick Gardiner, is a gateway to sites that contain well over 500 primary documents and literature that was "most relevant to the colonists' lives in America." The collection is arranged chronologically and divided into five time periods: 500 BC to 500 AD contains works by classical philosophers and poets such as Aristotle and Socrates, the Bible, and works by figures such as St. Augustine; 500 AD to 1500 contains such works as the Laws of William the Conqueror, Magna Carta, and English law treatises; 1500-1600 provides such documents as the writings of Martin Luther, letters by Christopher Columbus, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs; 1600-1700 contains a variety of colonial maps and charters, an indentured servant's contract, the works of John Smith of Jamestown settlement and John Winthrop of Plimouth Plantation, among other documents; and 1700-1800 contains such documents as the Virginia Slave Laws, William Byrd I's diary, and the works of Lord Bolingbroke.

Each chronological category divides the documents into 15 to 25 subject categories. While there is no keyword search, the site's chronological and subject divisions make it easily navigable, and it provides a wealth of resources for those particularly interested in political, cultural, religious, or constitutional early American history.

Part of the National Geographic Society website, this is an interactive exercise in which the visitor follows a narrative compiled from several Salem witchcraft trial accounts. These trials took place in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. The site places visitors in the shoes of one of Salem's accused witches, describing conditions in the jail, the ordeal of the trial, and the accused's eventual confession to performing acts of witchcraft. The site also provides links to brief, 100-word biographies of 11 persons involved in the trials, such as young accusers Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams, slave and accused witch Tituba, and Tituba's master, Reverend Samuel Parris. The narrative leads to a positive outcome--the accused is eventually released from prison--but it offers an optional link to discover what may have happened to a prisoner who refused to confess his or her guilt. The site also contains links to a discussion forum and to an "Ask the Expert" page which allows visitors to pose questions to Richard Trask, Danvers, Massachusetts, archivist and curator of the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. There is also a four-item bibliography of recent works on the Salem trials. This site contains no primary documents, yet it is useful for conveying to younger secondary school students the sense of the panic that surrounded the trials.

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.

This archive makes available varied material on English, American, and Missouri history, including speeches, pamphlets, plat books, and government documents. The collection of Daniel Webster speeches offers more than 100 items that, in addition to his addresses and speeches in Congress, include sermons, addresses, orations, and speeches in his honor, as well as some correspondence. The Fourth of July orations collection contains more than 100 items, including orations by John Quincy Adams, Charles F. Adams, and Daniel Webster. The site also offers a collection of more than 110 Missouri county plat books published in 1930, a collection of various items of Missouriana, and a group of four miscellaneous texts that includes an 80-page text on the liberty of the press published in London in 1812. The collection of 17th- to 19th-century British religious, political, and legal tracts contains more than 400 documents and pamphlets published primarily during the English Civil War. Each collection can be individually searched. For anyone researching 17th- and 18th-century transatlantic history, the political history of New England, or the history of Missouri, this is a collection worth consulting.

More than 40 historical census reports, including decennial reports dating back to 1790, are available for download on this website as PDFs. Historical statistics address topics such as population totals by race, urban or rural status, educational attainment, and means of transportation to work, among others.

There are also histories of the 21 U.S. census questionnaires produced from 1790 to 2000, including instructions to census marshals dating back to 1820. Comparative tables show which censuses included specific questions on subjects, such as ancestry and mental disabilities, and whether respondents were deaf, blind, insane, feeble-minded, paupers, literate, or convicts. Additional information includes state and territorial censuses, mortality schedules produced for a number of 19th-century censuses, population at the time of each census, and supplemental censuses taken at various times on free and slave inhabitants, Indian populations, unemployment, and housing.

Because of the PDF format, the reports take a number of minutes to download. These materials are useful for those needing demographic information or researching the history of census taking and the development of census categories.

Currently provides more than 122 images of objects, documents, and photographs pertaining to the history of the town of Worthington, OH, founded in 1803 by a group of families migrating from western Connecticut and Massachusetts. The site creators plan to add more materials in the future, including digitized versions of 19th- and 20th-century newspapers and oral histories. Users may search by subject, title, or keyword in bibliographic records—which include abstracts of up to 100 words for each item—or browse the collection by decade or 27 categories covering aspects of the social, economic, cultural, civic, and environmental history of the town. Includes links to 22 related sites. Useful for those studying local history.