Connecticut Historical Society

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A nonprofit museum, library, and education center, the Connecticut Historical Society offers an abundance of resources through its website. Its collections document the cultural, social, political, economic, and military history of Connecticut.

Visit Online Exhibits to see resources the society currently offers online. As of July 10, 2012, the site features an exhibit on the department store G. Fox & Co., which operated in Hartford from 1847 until 1993. In Research, "Collection Highlights" features 25 artifacts pulled from the society's collections, ranging from Silly Putty to one of the flags that decorated Abraham Lincoln's box in Ford's Theatre on the day he was assassinated.

Educators will be most interested in three other resources found in Research:

  • The eMuseumfeatures more than 8,000 objects from the society's collections, including "clothing, furniture, weapons, needlework, tools, household objects, photographs, paintings, prints, drawings, and more." Visitors can search by keyword or by other categories, such as culture, date, and medium. Visitors can also browse specific collections, including "Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art, and Family, 1740-1840," "G. Fox & Co.," "Kellogg Brothers Lithographs," "Tavern and Inn Signs," "West End Architecture," and "Women Photographers."
  • Connecticut History Online offers more than 16,000 primary sources from Connecticut, searchable by keyword. Eleven "Journeys" introduce visitors to resources related to diversity, work and the workplace, daily life, the environment, and infrastructure. Each journey features photo essays made up of three or more images, tips for searching for related sources, and suggestions for further reading. "Classroom" provides lesson plans, classroom activities, and guidelines on using and citing primary sources and analyzing images.
  • Connecticut's Civil War Monuments features essays on monuments' purpose, designs, supplies and materials, artists and materials, and dedication ceremonies, and listings of Civil War monuments by location. Each listing includes a photo of the monument and its dedication date, type, supplier, donor, and height, as well as a brief summary of its historical and artistic significance, a description of the monument, and a transcription of its lettering.

The Sonic Memorial Project

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This is an ambitious project that details the history of the World Trade Centers and September 11th through sound. Originally started by NPR_s Kitchen Sisters who host the radio program "Lost and Found Sound," this site harnesses the strengths of many organizations involved in image, audio, and video archiving such as Picture Projects and the September 11th Digital Archive. To date they have received more than 1,000 contributions from individuals and organizations that describe not just the thoughts or memories of September 11th survivors, but also narrations of events, such as weddings, that took place in the Towers. The site also contains a section for educators with six curriculum modules of two to three lessons each. In sum, this is an multi-sensory site that engages modern history and its impact on modern America.

Lionel Hampton: His Life and Legacy

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A tribute to jazz great Lionel Hampton, this site explains the long friendship between a university and a musician (after whom the University of Idaho named the Lionel Hampton School of Music). The site includes a 1,000-word biography of Hampton, as well as a timeline of his relationship to the school. Also included are a gallery of 23 photographs and a collection of nine videos of Hampton performing and conducting teaching sessions. A PDF version of Hampton's discography rounds out the collection.

Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum

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The heart of this collection about President Lyndon Baines Johnson is a group of 77 oral history interviews (up to 200 pages each) with members of Johnson's administration, Congressional colleagues, journalists, civil rights leaders, and a historian. The website provides 14 audio files, including telephone conversations, State of the Union addresses, Johnson's speech to Congress following the Kennedy assassination, and an excerpt of his television address announcing his decision not to run for a second term.

Also available are transcripts of 25 speeches; 50 "days of" diary entries; and the 99 National Security Action memoranda issued during Johnson's presidency relaying foreign policy directives and initiating actions. There are 150 photographs and one campaign advertisement. Biographical information is furnished in two chronologies. An exhibit from the Johnson museum provides an essay about events in Johnson's lifetime.

Prosperity and Thrift: Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy

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This exhibit assembles a wide assortment of materials from the 1920s, items loosely related to the prosperity of the Coolidge years and the rise of a mass consumer economy. The collection includes more than 400 documents, images, and audio and video clips on subjects ranging from automobiles, consumer goods, department stores, families, Motion Picture News, and the National Negro Business League, to politics.

An introductory essay provides valuable background information on the Coolidge administration with additional insight on the social and cultural context of the era. An alphabetized guide to people, organizations, and topics includes definitions and brief descriptions. This sort of material has not been widely available, and this collection is extremely valuable as a resource on the development of mass consumption.

Profiles in Science

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These documents, exhibits, photographs, and essays tell the history of 26 prominent 20th-century scientists, physicians, and experts in biomedical research and public health. The site is divided thematically into "Biomedical Research," "Health and Medicine," and "Fostering Science and Health." The collections include published and unpublished items, such as books, journals, pamphlets, diaries, letters, manuscripts, photographs, audiotapes, video clips, and other materials. Each exhibit includes introductory narratives and biographies of each scientist and a selection of noteworthy documents. The collections are particularly strong in cellular biology, genetics, and biochemistry, with attention to health and medical research policy, application of computers in medicine, science education, and the history of modern science.

The History of Social Security

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The Social Security program and the institutional history of the Social Security Administration (SSA) and its contribution to the welfare of the American public are presented on this site. It contains a vast collection of oral histories, audio recordings, and primary documents of the SSA. The audio and video clip section includes radio debates on the merits of the Social Security program taped during 1935, Lyndon B. Johnson's remarks on the passage of the Medicare bill in 1965, and Ronald Reagan's remarks at the signing of the Social Security Amendments of 1983. Also available are Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon's recorded telephone conversations that reference Social Security and Medicare. Another notable feature is the 37 oral history interviews conducted by SSA in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Additional oral history collections are featured, providing information about the 1977 creation of Health Care Financing Administration and policy issues involving the Medicare and Social Security programs.

William P. Gottlieb: Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz

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Writer-photographer William P. Gottlieb (1917–2006) documented the New York and Washington, D.C. jazz scene from 1938 to 1948 in more than 1,600 photographs. During the course of his career, Gottlieb took portraits of prominent jazz musicians—including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, and Benny Carter—and legendary venues, such as 52nd Street, the Apollo Theatre, Cafe Society, the Starlight Roof, and Zanzibar. The site also features approximately 170 related articles by Gottlieb from Down Beat magazine; 16 photographs accompanied by Gottlieb's audio commentary on various assignments; a 4,300-word biography based on oral histories; and a 31-title bibliography. Extremely valuable for jazz fans, music historians, musicians, and those interested in urban popular culture.

Race and Place

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This archive addresses Jim Crow, or racial segregation, laws from the late 1880s until the mid-20th century, focusing on the town of Charlottesville, VA. The theme is the connection of race with place by understanding the lives of African Americans in the segregated South. Political materials includes seven political broadsides and a timeline of African American political activity in Charlottesville and Virginia. Census data includes searchable databases containing information about individual African Americans taken from the 1870 and 1910 Charlottesville census records. City records includes information on individual African Americans and African American businesses. Oral histories includes audio files from over 37 interviews. Personal papers contains indexes to the Benjamin F. Yancey family papers and the letters of Catherine Flanagan Coles. Newspapers, still in progress, includes more than 1,000 transcribed articles from or about Charlottesville or Albemarle from two major African American newspapers—the Charlottesville Recorder and the Richmond Planet. Images has links to two extensive image collections, the Holsinger Studio Collection and the Jackson Davis Collection of African American Educational Photographs, and three smaller collections.

Remembering Jim Crow

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Created as a companion to a National Public Radio (NPR) documentary on segregation in the South, this website presents thirty audio excerpts from oral history interviews, ranging from one minute to ten minutes in length, and 130 photographs. Materials are arranged in six thematically-organized sections that address legal, social, and cultural aspects of segregation, black community, and black resistance to the Jim Crow way of life. As anthropologist Kate Ellis, one of the site’s creators, notes, the interviews display a "marked contrast between African American and white reflections on Jim Crow." Many of the photographs come from personal collections of the people interviewed. The website presents sixteen photographs taken by Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee in New Iberia, Louisiana. Also available are audio files and transcripts of the original radio documentary, more than ninety additional stories, a sampling of state segregation laws arranged by topic, links to nine related sites, and a bibliography.