Nixtontapes.org

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Photo, Nixon standing with Lyndon Johnson, 1971, NARA
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In February 1971 to July 1973, President Richard Nixon secretly began recording phone conversations and meetings, compiling thousands of hours of tape. Created in 2007 by a Texas A&M University history professor, this website intends to provide "the most complete digitized Nixon tape collection in existence."

At present, only a fraction of the recordings are available. Visitors may listen to MP3 versions of over 500 conversations organized by primary conversation participant; 29 conversations organized by topic themes; and more than 2,000 hours of conversations organized by the date of their release to the general public.

Though the site promises that all recordings will eventually be accompanied by full transcripts, accompanying material is spotty. Some recordings are accompanied by corresponding entries from the presidential daily diary, some by general outlines of the recording's topics, and a handful by full transcripts. The recordings vary in quality, from fully audible to inaudibly faint or noise-obscured.

The website is not searchable (the search engine on the home page searches the web at large). As it stands, it may be useful to educators as a casual introduction to the recordings for students, but locating specific content (to accompany lesson plans or complement events being taught in class) would require significant time.

American President: An Online Reference Resource

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Image for American President: An Online Reference Resource
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Information on all 43 of the nation's presidents is presented on this website. Each president is featured individually with an in-depth biographical essay, details about the first lady and members of the Cabinet, links to the President's speeches, and discussions with current scholars. The Presidency as an institution is treated thoroughly in the "President at Work" section with essays on general areas of presidential duty: domestic and economic policy; national security; legislative affairs; administration of the government and White House; and presidential politics.

Clicking on "Presidential Oral Histories" or "Presidential Recordings" under the "Academic Programs" tab reveals an additional wealth of information. Recordings are available for Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. After tapes were prohibited from the Oval Office following the Watergate scandal, the Miller Center began to conduct oral history projects, producing hours of interviews with Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton and their staff.

Documenting Our Past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project

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Photo, Charles Teenie Harris, c. 1950-1970, Documenting Our Past
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This archive of 1,500 photographs taken by Teenie Harris, photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, "one of the largest and most influential Black newspapers in the country," documents African American urban life in Pittsburgh from the 1930s to the 1960s. This is a sample of the 80,000 images that make up the full collection. Many of the images have not been identified and the site's authors ask assistance (a submission form accompanies each image).

Visitors can browse the collection through 15 galleries of 100 images each. They can also comment on images and view the comments of others. Following the link to the Teenie Harris image collection in the Historic Pittsburgh Images Collections at the University of Pittsburgh allows visitors to browse the 541 images that have been identified with full captions. The site also offers a chronology of Harris's life. This site is useful for researching the history of Pittsburgh and its African American community as well as urban history or African American history in general.

After the Day of Infamy

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Day of Infamy website screen shot
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More than 12 hours of audio interviews conducted in the days following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and in January and February, 1942, are included on this site. Interviews include the voices of 200 "ordinary Americans" recorded in 10 places across the U.S.

December recordings were made by fieldworkers contacted by the Library of Congress Radio Research Project to gather opinions of a diverse group of citizens regarding American entrance into war. In the 1942 recordings, produced by the Office of Emergency Management, interviewees were instructed to speak their minds directly to the President. Interviewees discuss domestic issues, including racism and labor activism, in addition to the war. Related written documents and biographies of the fieldworkers are also presented. The interviews are available in audio files and text transcriptions, and are searchable by keyword, subject, and location.

Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Project

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Logo, Veterans History Project
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This collection presents video and audio oral histories and additional material from American veterans of 20th-century wars. Materials include memoirs (some lengthy), letters, diaries, photo albums, scrapbooks, poetry, artwork, and official documents. The website currently provides digital materials from 4,351 veterans from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and the Iraq War, and other similar events. The 226 video interviews range from 25 minutes to two hours in length.

The material presented is part of a rapidly growing archive, the Veterans History Project, created by Congress in 2000 to collect stories from the 19 million living veterans. Other sections highlight World War I; World War II's forgotten theaters in China, Burma, and India; and 37 other unique war experiences.

Kentuckiana Digital Library

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Image for Kentuckiana Digital Library
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These historical materials come from 15 Kentucky colleges, universities, libraries, and historical societies. There are nearly 8,000 photographs; 95 full-text books, manuscripts, and journals from 1784 to 1971; 94 oral histories; 78 issues of Mountain Life and Work from 1925-62; and 22 issues of Works Progress Administration in Kentucky: Narrative Reports.

Photographs include collections by Russell Lee, who documented health conditions resulting from coal industry practices; Roy Stryker, head of the New Deal Farm Security Administration photographic section; and others that provide images of cities, towns, schools, camps, and disappearing cultures. Oral histories address Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed, Senator John Sherman Cooper, the Frontier Nursing Service, veterans, fiddlers, and the transition from farming to an industrial economy. Texts include Civil War diaries, religious tracts, speeches, correspondence, and scrapbooks. Documents cover a range of topics, including colonization societies, civil rights, education, railroads, feuding, the Kentucky Derby, Daniel Boone, and a personal recollection of Abraham Lincoln.

Library of Virginia Digital Library Program

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Image for Library of Virginia Digital Library Program
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More than 1.2 million items on Virginia and life in the South are available on this website, including 40,000 photographs and maps, 350,000 court documents, and 800,000 manuscripts. Manuscripts include governors' letters, land office grants, Revolutionary War bounty land warrants, Confederate pensions, and disability applications. Several complete collections are available, as well as 25 exhibits on Virginia history.

Users can find photographs that document buildings and people; patents and grants submitted to the Virginia Land Office between 1623 and 1992; Northern Neck Grants and Survey forms filed between 1692 and 1892; military records, including Revolutionary War state pensions material and World War I History Commission Questionnaires; WPA Life Histories; and Virginia Religious Petitions from 1774 to 1802. Exhibits deal with topics including the legacy of the New Deal in Virginia; resistance to slavery; Virginia roots music (with seven audio selections); Thomas Jefferson; John Marshall; Virginia's coal towns; and political life in the state.

StoryCorps

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Photo, Bob Heft, Designer of  the 50 star flag, StoryCorps
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StoryCorps is a nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting and preserving the stories of people across the U.S. Founded in 2003, it has collected more than 15,000 stories from people in all walks of life—immigrants, veterans, those that suffer from debilitating diseases, lovers, September 11th survivors, and many more. Each recorded conversation includes two or three people, often grandchildren interviewing grandparents, old friends interviewing each other, or children remembering their parents. Clips, usually between two and five minutes, from hundreds of these stories are available.

The clips are keyword searchable and browseable by category: Angels & Mentors, Discovery, Friendship, Griot, Growing Up, Hurricane Katrina, Identity, Romance, September 11, Struggle, Witness, Wisdom, and Work. Many people discuss their involvement in World War II or the Vietnam War, and many more talk about how they met their spouses or coped with segregation. Always thought-provoking, and often moving, these clips can expose the more human side of major 20th-century events.

African Americans in the Spanish Civil War

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Photo, Paul Williams, Pilot, December 1937
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This site documents the remarkable story of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a volunteer brigade of Americans who traveled to Europe to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Out of the 2,800 volunteers, 90 (including two women) were African Americans.

"Introduction" features a 3,800-word essay in three parts on the Brigade and its commitment to fighting fascism. "Resources" includes six audio and video files, more than 130 pages of documents, and approximately 50 photographs. "Biography" contains an index listing each of the 90 African American soldiers, along with a 250-word biography for each and photographs of most.

The site makes available for the first time a complete (and downloadable) copy of Walter Garland's 60-page FBI file. Garland was a Communist Party activist and founder of the United Negro Allied Veterans Association (UNAVA). Maps, a glossary, timelines, and lesson plans are coming soon as the producers finish building the site. The audio and video interviews, as well as the supporting documents, are useful primary sources, and the site is a good place to begin research on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

D-Day aharmon Wed, 06/29/2011 - 14:56
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Title graphic, American Experience: D-Day
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D-Day is a companion website to the PBS American Experience documentary of the same name. On Tuesday June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in France in an attempt to end World War II. The PBS documentary consists of archival footage and the commentary of 43 eyewitnesses.

While the film itself is not streaming online, you can read the full transcript, which alternates between narration and oral history.

Special Features includes some trivia points, accounts of D-Day by both U.S. and German soldiers, two breaking news articles of the invasion, statistics on paratroopers, and six letters home written by U.S. soldiers following D-Day.

Other site features include a timeline, short biographies of key figures, a map, and a teacher's guide. The teacher's guide offers four activity suggestions—one each for history, economics, geography, and civics. The history suggestion includes writing alternate histories and preparing oral reports on decisive battles in U.S. history.

All in all, the site provides a decent amount of historical trivia and personal accounts, which could be used to enliven a unit on World War II.