Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887

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This collection of documents—roughly 3,800 pages of court proceedings—concerns the Haymarket Affair. This watershed event in the history of American radicalism led to the first "Red Scare" in America. Materials include autobiographies of two of the eight anarchists tried for conspiracy in the murder of seven Chicago police officers. The officers died after a bomb exploded at an anarchist meeting in May 1886, the day after two workers died in a struggle between police and locked-out union members at the McCormick Reaper factory. Four defendants were executed, despite lack of evidence connecting them to the bombing. The site presents approximately 221 newspaper clippings, 55 photographs, 19 letters, nine broadsides, and images of more than 20 artifacts. A linked exhibition, "The Dramas of Haymarket," furnishes a historical narrative and contextual interpretation. This website is valuable for the study of late 19th-century American radicalism, law enforcement, and political climate.

Slavery in New York

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Focusing on the experiences of Africans and African Americans in New York City, this collection presents nine galleries that explore various themes and time periods in the history of slavery. These include the Atlantic slave trade; slavery in Dutch New York; the growth of slavery in British Colonial New York; freedom for blacks during the Revolutionary War; the Gradual Emancipation Act of 1799; free blacks in public life; Emancipation Day (July 4, 1827), and the history of scholarship on slavery in New York City. Each gallery has three panels: a gallery overview, a main thematic presentation, and one focusing on people, places, and documents. Of special interest are two interactive maps with timelines in the Dutch New York gallery and the Revolutionary War gallery; a picture gallery on the portrayal of blacks in New York City's public life; and profiles of nine African Americans who lived in New York City during the early republic.

Territorial Kansas Online

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These Territorial Kansas collections convey the growing divisions in Kansas and the nation over the expansion of slavery, federalism, nationalism, industrialization, and changing political coalitions in Congress. Materials include government documents, diaries, letters, photographs, maps, newspapers, rare secondary sources, historical artifacts, and images of historic sites. The website is divided into five sections: Territorial Politics and Government; Border Warfare; Immigration and Early Settlement; Personalities; and National Debate about Kansas. Each is searchable by keyword, author, and county. Topical sections are subdivided into relevant themes and include an introductory essay. Visitors will find essays on territorial politics, the rights of women and African Americans, military organizations, and free state and pro-slavery organizations. "Personalities" lists 32 individuals, including John Calhoun, and the final section presents both anti-slavery and pro-slavery perspectives of the national debate about Kansas. The site also includes a timeline with links and an annotated bibliography.

Readex Digital Collections

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Hundreds of thousands of documents spanning four centuries of American history are available in this large archive. Broadsides, ephemera, pamphlets, and booklets are available from 1639 to 1900. More than 1,300 newspaper titles, representing all 50 states, range in date from 1690 to 1922. U.S. Senate and House of Representatives reports, journals, and other documents are available from 1817 to 1980. Legislative and executive documents from the Early Republic are also included. The entire body of documents is keyword searchable, and, in addition, each collection can be searched and browsed individually. These documents shed light on many aspects of American social, political, economic, and cultural history, and can provide a valuable window into the daily lives of early Atlantic peoples. The collection of broadsides and ephemera is especially useful for exploring the history of printing in the United States, as all titles can be browsed by bookseller, printer, or publisher.

Lakota Winter Counts

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This anthropological exhibit displays, explains, and interprets the Lakota pictorial histories known as winter counts. Featuring a searchable database of winter count images, a documentary about Lakota history and culture, and video interviews with Lakota people, website visitors can view images from 10 winter counts and examine their symbols in detail by year with curator comments. Visitors are also able to examine the various symbols used by the winter count keepers to represent plants and animals, ceremonies, health, trade goods, places, people, the U.S. government, and the sky. "Who Are the Lakota" offers a historical overview of Lakota history in 10 segments that include the Lakota and the Sioux people, Lakota origins, westward migration, horse-centered culture on the northern Great Plains, important conflicts and treaties, confinement to the Great Sioux Reservation, and subsequent land cessions.

USC Archival Research Center

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These varied collections document the history of Los Angeles and southern California. "Digital Archives" offer more than 126,000 photographs, maps, manuscripts, texts, and sound recordings in addition to exhibits. Nearly 1,200 images of artifacts from early Chinese American settlements in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara are available, as is the entire run of El Clamor Publico, the city's main Spanish-language newspaper from the 1850s. Photographs document Japanese American relocation during World War II and photographs, documents, and oral history audio files record Korean-American history. The archive also includes Works Projects Administration Land Use survey maps and Auto Club materials. A related exhibit, "Los Angeles: Past, Present, and Future", offers collections on additional topics, including discovery and settlement, California missions, electric power, "murders, crimes, and scandals," city neighborhoods, cemeteries, Disneyland, African American gangs, and the Red Car lines.

Chinese in California, 1850-1925

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These 8,000 items document the immigrant experience of Chinese who settled in California during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials include photographs, letters, diaries, speeches, business records, legal documents, pamphlets, sheet music, cartoons, and artwork.

Access is provided through nine galleries, each containing an introductory essay and 70 to 575 items. Four galleries present materials on San Francisco's Chinatown, including architectural space, business and politics, community life, and appeal to outsiders. Additional galleries deal with Chinese involvement in U.S. expansion westward; communities outside San Francisco; agricultural, fishing and related industries; the anti-Chinese movement and Chinese exclusion; and sentiments concerning the Chinese. Visitors may search by keyword, name, subject, title, group, and theme. The site will be useful for studying ethnic history, labor history, and the history of the West as well as Chinese-American history.

The Wizard of Oz: An American Fairy Tale

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The cultural impact of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is the focus of this well-designed exhibit. Three galleries offer images and explanatory text.

"'To Please a Child': L. Frank Baum and the Land of Oz" examines various aspects of the book, including W.W. Denslow's artwork, Baum's original copyright application, and an early review of the book appearing in the October 1900 issue of The Literary Review. "To See the Wizard: Oz on Stage and Film" looks at two of the most famous productions of Baum's book, the 1902–1903 stage play that became one of Broadway's greatest successes and the classic 1939 MGM movie, including color posters and a full-page color advertisement placed in the September 1939 issue of Cosmopolitan "To Own the Wizard: Oz Artifacts" examines Oz-related novelties, including the Wizard of Oz Monopoly game by Hasbro, a Wizard of Oz stamp, and "The Royal Bank of Oz" rebate check from MGM.

Thomas A. Edison Papers

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A vast database of Thomas Edison's papers, this website includes 71,000 pages of correspondence, 12,000 pages of technical drawings, and more than 13,000 clippings about the inventor from 103 journals and newspapers. The site boasts over five million pages of documents related to Edison. Processes for searching the site are complicated, but an extensive guide offers search strategies.

Materials include 2,210 facsimiles of Edison patents from 1868 to 1931 for products such as the electric lamp and the phonograph. A collection of 14 photographs, maps, and prints depict Edison, his environs, and his inventions. The site offers a "Document Sampler" of 23 selections of general interest as well as an 8,000-word essay on Edison's companies, 22 pages about Edison and the development of the motion picture industry, and two chronologies. A bibliography directs visitors to more than 70 books and articles and 21 related websites.

Plymouth Colony Archive Project

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A wealth of documents and analytical essays emphasize the social history of Plymouth Colony from 1620 to 1691. This website also offers a tribute to the scholarly work of the late James Deetz, professor of historical archaeology. Documents include 135 probates, 24 wills, and 14 texts containing laws and court cases on land division, master-servant relations, sexual misconduct, and disputes involving Native Americans.

The site also provides more than 90 biographical studies, research papers, and topical articles that analyze "life ways" of 395 individuals who lived in the colony and offer theoretical views on the colony's legal structure, gender roles, vernacular house forms, and domestic violence. There are 25 maps or plans, approximately 50 photographs, and excerpts from Deetz's books on the history and myths of Plymouth Colony and on Anglo-American gravestone styles.