Primary Sources - United States - HIST 398 History Senior Capstone (BMC)

US Census

Social Explorer
Easily download data and create maps from the U.S. Census, 1790-present. Not all questions asked on the Census are included in the Social Explorer data set. If you can't locate the information you need, check the Data Dictionary. Feel free to ask Simon Elichko (selichk1) for help.
Ancestry.com
Scanned images of the US Census from 1790-1940 including individual respondent information (address, household members, etc.)

Also includes the American Genealogical Biographical Index, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, and many other resources for researching individuals (especially in the US).

Historic Documents
Published annually since 1972, the Historic Documents Series now contains 40 volumes of primary sources. Each volume includes approximately one hundred documents covering the most significant events of the year. These documents range from presidential speeches, international agreements, and Supreme Court decisions to U.S. governmental reports, scientific findings, and cultural discussions.

Early American Imprints: Series I, Evans (1639-1800)
Covers American history and literature from the colonial period to the eighteenth century. Provides full-text digitization of the Early American Imprints microform set, Series I (1639-1800).
Early American Imprints: Series II, Shaw-Shoemaker (1801-1819)
Covers American history and literature from the colonial period to the eighteenth century. Provides full-text digitization of the Early American Imprints microform set, Series II (1801-1819). Covering every aspect of American life during the early decades of the United States.
Women & Social Movements in the United States: 1600-2000
This resource provides documents pertaining to women and social movements. Includes document projects that interpret and present documents to address a question or a scholarly debate. Also includes images, a dictionary of social movements, a chronology and teaching tools. Covers the 17th century to the 21st century.
Documenting the American South
A collection of sources on Southern history, literature and culture from the colonial period through the first decades of the twentieth century.

Chester Oral History Project
Supported by the History Department and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility at Swarthmore College, and by the Chester Housing Authority, the Chester Oral History Project consists of interviews with Chester residents and covers such topics as their migration experiences, education, and work as union organizers. Full interview transcripts and audio files can be retrieved from the History Department at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA; at Nia Center, Chester PA; and at Wolfgram Memorial Library at Widener University, Chester PA.
Discovering American Women's History
This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s.

Sixties: Primary Documents & Personal Narratives, 1960-1974
Provides a searchable collection that brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. With 150,000 pages of material at completion, this searchable collection is the definitive electronic resource for students and scholars researching this important period in American history, culture, and politics.

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
The Behind the Veil Oral History Project was undertaken by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies from 1993 to 1995. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the primary purpose of this documentary project was to record and preserve the living memory of African American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s. Over the span of three summers, teams of researchers conducted oral history interviews with more than one thousand elderly black southerners who remembered that period of legal segregation.

One hundred of the interviews have been digitized and made available on this site, with transcripts, totaling about 175 hours of recordings and 10,000 pages of text.

ProQuest History Vault: NAACP Papers 2
Collection: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--education, voting, housing, employment, armed forces. Major campaigns for equal access to education, voting, employment, housing and the military are covered in this module. The education files in this module document the NAACP’s systematic assault on segregated education that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Files from 1955 –1965 focus on the NAACP’s efforts to implementthe Brown decision as well as to combat de facto segregation outside of the South.
ProQuest History Vault: NAACP Papers 3
Explore documents from the NAACP's archives. Section 3: NAACP's Major Campaigns--focuses on the NAACP's efforts regarding anti-lynching, peonage, and discrimination in employment and the criminal justice system. A rich set of records in this module is the NAACP file on one of the most celebrated criminal trials of the 20th century---the case of the Scottsboro boys.

U.S. Congressional Serial Set
These reports and documents touch on many aspects of US domestic and international affairs, so the Serial Set can offer interesting sources for researching topics one doesn't think of as strictly government-focused.
ProQuest Congressional
Provides daily updated information on the U.S. legislature, including full text of bills starting in 1989, public laws starting in 1988, committee reports starting in 1990, House and Senate documents starting in 1995, Congressional Record starting in 1985, Federal Register starting in 1980, National Journal starting in 1977 and other government information.
Digital National Security Archive (DNSA)
Contains full text declassified government documents owned by the National Security Archive covering world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions. Includes collections of indexed documents (with new collections added yearly), glossaries, chronologies, bibliographies, overviews, and photographs. Coverage from post-World War II to present.

FBIS Daily Reports
FBIS Daily Reports issued by the U.S. Government. Translations of broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the world . "The United States' principal record of political and historical open source intelligence" Swarthmore holdings from 1941-1974, Bryn Mawr and Haverford from 1941-1996

American State Papers, 1789-1838
Provides access to U.S. congressional materials from 1789 through 1838, including 1st Congress, 1st Session through 25th Congress, 2nd Session.