Historical World War II Photos

Image
Photo, Lt. John W. Wainwright Of Marshall, Texas. . . , NARA
Annotation

NOTE: Unpublished as too commercial, 2/8/12

Historical World War II Photos claims to be the largest free collection of World War II photographs available online, digitized from the National Archives.

The downside to the site is that it's unclear whether registration is free or not. One page claims that you can sign up for a free seven-day trial, while the actual registration page simply states that the site is free.

Regardless of registration cost ambiguity, there is still plenty to do without signing up. Access to the photographs is free, and you can search by keyword or using a list of topics located on the main page. Once you find a photograph that you are interested in, you can select it for a large copy. Then click on "About image" in the toolbar above the photo for a list of information on the work—source, author, caption, location, categories, and more. If registered users have accessed the photo, they may have added annotations, such as comments, names of individuals pictured, and text transcriptions; connections, links to small informative pages; and spotlights, which appear to be notices that one or more users have marked the photograph as being of interest.

Take a look at a sample connection on Kristallnacht. The page offers a timeline, links to all the photos listed as related, facts, stories, and links. This information appears to be largely user-generated, so it would require fact-checking; but it could be a handy way to connect photographs to the bigger picture or to find photographs related to a particular event, person, or topic.

Without registering, all of the above can be accessed. What you can't do is participate in annotating, spotlighting, linking connections, or uploading your own World War II photos.

Even without the annotations, this website would be worth your time. The search system is easy to use, and breaks results down into categories, helping you to narrow your search.

Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s

Image
Illustration, Cover of Comic Book, Library of Congress
Annotation

This site features two "special presentations" and presents hundreds of primary materials relating to baseball in America. Materials include letters, manuscripts, trading cards, lobby cards, newspaper images, photographs, advertisements, sheet music, and transcripts of interviews, speeches, and television broadcasts. The first presentation, "Baseball, the Color Line, and Jackie Robinson, 1860s-1960s," furnishes approximately 30 documents and photographs in a 5-section timeline that examines the history of Jackie Robinson's entry into the major league baseball. It includes material on the Negro Leagues, the nature of baseball's color line, Robinson's career as a Brooklyn Dodger, and his role as a civil rights activist.

A second presentation, "Early Baseball Pictures," presents 34 images dealing with baseball from the 1860s to the 1920s divided into five sections. The site also includes an annotated bibliography comprised of 82 titles and a list of six links to related resources. While limited in size and focus with regard to general baseball history, this site is valuable as an introductory look at Jackie Robinson's life and the topic of race in American sports history.

Architecture and Interior Design for America: 1935-1955

Image
Photo, Charles E.F. McCann residence, Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, LoC
Annotation

A photo archive of more than 29,000 images, produced by architectural photographers Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner. Gottscho and Schleisner were commissioned to document the work of architects, sculptors, and artists for individuals and institutional clients, such as House Beautiful and House and Garden magazines. The collection specializes in views taken primarily in the northeastern United States--many in the New York City area--and in Florida. Subjects include homes, stores, offices, factories, and historic buildings. Also of note are 100 color images of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair. As the introductory text points out, the assembled group of photographs can "serve as a document of social change from a particular vantage point of the middle and upper classes of society."

Hitting the Sawdust Trail With Billy Sunday

Image
Portrait, Billy Sunday, 1916, Wheaton College
Annotation

This site provides information about the American evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935). A 400-word biographical essay, accompanied by seven images, traces Sunday's background. A 750-word essay with 22 images describes selected exhibit items, including 26 photographs of Sunday, eight photographs of Sunday's associates, 9 photographs and a blueprint of Sunday's tabernacles, a prayer pamphlet, a clippings scrapbook, samples of press coverage, and sermon notes. Many of these items are presented as images, not as readable texts. The site furnishes researcher information on the Sunday Papers, held at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, Illinois, and includes a link to a website with an audio file of a Sunday sermon on "booze."

The Urban Landscape

Image
Photo, San Francisco
Annotation

A searchable database of approximately 1,000 historical images from 14 collections at Duke University, focusing mainly on cities and towns in the American South from the late 19th century to the 1980s. Includes 41 aerial views taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1918 of towns in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina; 150 picture postcards of southern towns from the turn of the century to the 1960s; 22 photos of the 1886 earthquake in Charlotte, SC; 32 photographs taken in Savannah, GA around the turn of the century; 28 taken in Cheraw, SC, in the early 20th century; 112 shot in Durham, NC, from the turn of the century up to 1950; and 66 photos, taken mostly in Durham, for 18 Duke University undergraduate documentary photography projects created between 1979 and 1985. The site also includes a series of 97 photographs taken in Salem, MA, in the 1890s; 31 images from the Philippine Islands and other Far East locations taken between 1899 and 1902; and four series of 218 photographs by documentarist William Gedney taken in New York, San Francisco, and Benares, India. Especially of value for students of urban architecture and for those interested in images of southern street life.

Freedom Now! An Archival Project of Tougaloo College and Brown University

Image
Brochure, Fundraising to aid. . . , 1970, NAACP, Tougaloo College Archives
Annotation

This searchable archive offers more than 250 documents from the Mississippi Freedom Movement, the struggle to register African Americans to vote in Mississippi in the early 1960s, and the continuing Brown-Tougaloo Cooperative Exchange that grew out of it. The Freedom Movement was "one of the most inspiring and important examples of grass-roots activism in U.S. history." The archive includes books; manuscripts; periodicals; correspondence; interview transcripts; photographs; artifacts; and legal, organizational, and personal documents.

The collection can be searched by document type, keyword, or topic, including black power/black nationalism, college students, gender issues, incarceration, labor issues, legislation, media, non-violence, protest, segregation, and state government. The site offers two lesson plans on the Mississippi Freedom Movement based on documents in the database, one focused on the experiences of college-aged civil rights workers during the Freedom Movement and the other on voter registration. Other teaching resources include links to five websites on teaching with primary documents, six sites related to the African-American civil rights movement, and eight related books. This site is a useful resource for researching the Mississippi Freedom Movement, the history and people of the civil rights movement, or African-American history.

Brittingham Family Lantern Slide Collection

Image
Photo, Egypt, Cairo T. E. B. & M. C. B. at pyramids, March 1, 1904, Uni. of WI
Annotation

The Brittinghams were a prominent and influential family in Wisconsin. This collection of more than 1,600 images consists of their personal and travel photographs taken between the years 1897 and 1922. These images "capture the private lives of a wealthy family at the turn of the century, and document their travels to 22 states and 32 countries." The wide variety of subjects includes family life, social life, the Brittingham homes, and various scenes from around Wisconsin. More than 750 slides picture international locations. The site also offers an interesting collection of slides that picture forms of transportation encountered by the Brittinghams, including airplanes, sailboats, streetcars, trains, carriages, and sedans.

The collection can be browsed in its entirety or by pre-selected subjects (Wisconsin, Brittingham family, social life, international travel, interiors, or transportation). Visitors can search the slide collection by using the guided search option and selecting Brittingham Lantern Slides in the drop-down menu. For those researching the lives of the well-to-do in the U.S. at the turn of the century or, more generally, the social and cultural history of Wisconsin or the U.S. in the early decades of the twentieth century, this collection of images is a useful resource.

LexisNexis

Image
Logo, LexisNexis
Annotation

This service provides full-text and keyword searching to more than 5,900 news, business, legal, medical, and reference publications. The database accesses current and recent issues of more than 50 major English-language newspapers, including the New York Times and The Washington Post back to 1980 or earlier. The database also offers more than 400 magazines and journals, 600 newsletters, and transcripts of radio and television broadcasts from major networks.

Legal materials include Federal and state cases, laws, codes, and regulations and law review articles. Business resources include SEC filings and reports and corporate financial information and profiles. The site also provides statistical tables of data pertaining to industries, biographical information, country and state profiles, polls and surveys, and the World Almanac and Book of Facts. Access to various parts of this enormous resource varies by subscription agreement.

New York State Civilian Conservation Corps Museum

Image
Photo, Sawing ice off of Gilbert Lake to be stored in the Ice House...
Annotation

In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the federal government developed many programs designed to ease unemployment and put people back to work. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was one of these federal programs and this site was created as an introduction to the significant role the Corps played in the development of New York State's Gilbert Lake State Park. From 1933 to 1941, CCC Company 212, SP-11, lived and worked at Gilbert Lake. Those unfamiliar with the park should read the 1,300-word essay about Gilbert Lake and its accompanying 1,400-word essay, History of the CCC at Gilbert Lake, about the contribution of the CCC to the park.

The center of this otherwise simple exhibit is the more than 150 photographs. They include pictures of young men swimming in the lake, enjoying sack races, and building the camp. Visitors will also find recent photographs of the camp, including a 1999 restoration project of one of the park's cabin. The site is rounded out by three donated letters from people with memories about the CCC at Gilbert Lake and those interested will find the 40-item bibliography useful.