U.S. Army Signal Corps Photograph Collection

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Provides nearly 3,500 photographs taken at Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in Newport News, VA, where more than 1.5 million people arrived and departed during 1942-1946. The photographs were shot for the Army's Transportation Corps by U.S. Army Signal Corps photographers. In addition to military personnel, photos present civilian employees, Red Cross workers, wounded persons, entertainers, and German and Italian prisoners of war. In addition to Hampton Roads, seven photos were taken in Baltimore; one was shot in Chicago. Bibliographic records describe the images with information on persons, location, and date.

A special group of 34 images with descriptive captions document "The Odyssey of an American Soldier" from his arrival at Hampton Roads to his debarkation near a combat zone. Users can search images by personal name, ship name, geographic location, and keywords used in bibliographic records. Valuable for those studying military history and life at this key transportation site.

RFK in the Land of Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope

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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.

World War I History Commission Questionnaires

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Beginning in 1919, the Virginia War History Commission compiled more than 14,900 surveys of World War I veterans in Virginia. Images of these four-page questionnaires—with additional material submitted by veterans or family members, including 1,046 photographs—have been digitized and made accessible on this site. The surveys provide basic demographic information on the soldiers and their families, as well as details of their war records, including descriptions of engagements, citations, injuries, and deaths.

In addition, the last page of the survey poses questions regarding the effect of the war and military service on states of mind and religious beliefs, as well as effects of disabilities on employment after the war. A valuable source for historians and students researching military history and the war experience.

Picturing Hemingway: A Writer in His Time

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A celebratory exhibit of approximately 35 images and accompanying short texts—each only approximately 100 words in length—on the life of Nobel prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). The exhibit begins with the writer's family and educational background in Oak Park, IL, then offers sections on his Paris, middle, and later years. Images include photographs and artists' renditions of Hemingway and a few literary contemporaries, and images of covers of some of his novels. Though commentary is slight in content and in insight into the man and his art, the images and accompanying quotations are well-chosen.

Student Voices from World War II and the McCarthy Era

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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.

The Hartford Black History Project

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Provides two exhibits on black history in Hartford, CT. "A Struggle from the Start" charts stages in the life of the Hartford African-American community from 1638 to 1920. Structured in five chronological sections, each with three-to-four thematic subsections, a text of 21,000 words is punctuated with approximately 60 images of documents, photographs, illustrations, newspaper clippings, tables, paintings, and maps. This exhibit covers slavery, black codes, free blacks, Black governors in the early Republic period, black soldiers, the black bourgeoisie, the formation of the black community, black labor, black society, black churches, the "Talented Tenth" in Hartford, black painters Charles Ethan Porter and Holdridge Primus, black migration from the South, mass politics, and black community institutions. A second exhibit presents approximately 80 photographs from Hartford's African-American community covering the years 1870 to the 1970s. Valuable for those interested in studying African-American history from a community perspective.

U.S. Steel Gary Works Photograph Collection, 1906-1971

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This site presents more than 2,200 digital images of the Gary Works Steel Mill and the corporate town of Gary, IN. The "tour" includes 36 photographs with interpretive text documenting the creation of the steel mill and city life in Gary. The main body of the site contains thousands of digital images and users can search by keyword or browse by subject and date for various aspects of this planned industrial community. The subject headings include the steel mill and its workers; factories and furnaces; houses and office buildings; women, children, and welfare facilities; and work accidents. The "Contextual Materials" section is a good starting place for historians and researchers interested in the Industrial Revolution. It includes an approximately 2,200-word introductory essay, "The Magic City of Steel," by Steve McShane; four magazine articles dating from 1907 to 1913; six book excerpts, including the 1911 work by John Fitch, The Steel Workers; 14 pages from Raymond Mohl and Neil Betten's Steel City: Urban and Ethnic Patterns in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1950 and the Carl Sandburg poem, "The Mayor of Gary."

This section is rounded out by a nearly 80-item bibliography and links to additional information about Gary, steel making, and 30 archival collections. There is also a "Teacher's Guide" with ten primary and secondary school lesson plans and other online activities. A great site that is easily navigable for researchers, teachers, and students.

Lift Every Voice: Music in American Life

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An exhibit of music and documents that "commemorates and celebrates a variety of songs that were a part of everyday American life through the centuries." Includes 18 audio excerpts lasting approximately one minute each of representative ballads, hymns and spirituals, patriotic odes, minstrel tunes, songs from musicals, protest songs, and songs about the state of Virginia. Clips include performances by Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Lead Belly, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. Accompanied by a 10,500-word essay arranged by types of music and interspersed with more than 100 historical documents, including manuscripts, illustrations, photographs, hymn books, songsters, portraits, posters, sheet music covers, album covers, and record labels. A "Virginiana" section provides material from Thomas Jefferson's library to illustrate his interest in music. The site is a good introduction for those interested in understanding historical roles, functions, and uses of music by various American groups.

Remembering Herblock

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Presents an exhibit of 36 political cartoons and five essays by Herblock (Herbert Block), the acclaimed Washington Post political cartoonist who died in October 2001 after a career spanning seven decades. This tribute includes cartoons and the essays originally put together in 1995 for the exhibit "Five Decades of Herblock," as well as cartoons from 1998 to 2001, 12 photographs, three essays of appreciation, and the editorial that appeared in the newspaper the day after he died. As if to illustrate Herblock's observation that "Political cartoons, unlike sundials, do not show the brightest hours," the exhibit addresses such "dark" American topics as the "fear and smear" era of HUAC and McCarthyism (a term Herblock himself coined), Jim Crow in the 1950s and 1960s, the Vietnam War, Watergate and other Nixon-era scandals, Reagonomics, the 1994 Republican "Revolution," the Clinton impeachment, the Columbine shootings, and the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. Although the site is marred by annoying pop-up ads, this remains a valuable site for those studying popular culture and the history of political cartoons.

The Commercial Closet

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Advertised as "the world's largest collection of gay advertising," this site provides video clips, still photo storyboards, descriptive critiques, and indexing to more than 600 television and print media ad representations of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered. Users can access ads by year; brand; company; business category; themes; region; agency; target group (gays or mainstream); and portrayals ("what the imagery/narrative conveys about gayness") categorized as vague, neutral, positive, or negative. Although the earliest ad is from 1958, the majority are drawn from the past 10 years. The creator, a business journalist, notes that "the project is also creating a historic document that charts the burlesquing of the gay community, and the move toward more positive and inclusive portrayals." Visitors with an interest in gay history, popular culture, consumer culture, and advertising can do their own charting with the materials provided.