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Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League, believed that solutions to the problem of racial discrimination were primarily economic, and that bringing African Americans into the middle class was the key. In 1900, he established the League "to promote the commercial and financial development of the Negro," and headed it until his death. Coverage: 1901-1928. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

This collection of records reproduces the writings and statements of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and its leaders. It also covers organizations that evolved from or were influenced by RAM and persons that had close ties to RAM. Source Library: Personal Collection of Dr. Muhammad Ahmad. Coverage: 1962-1999. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

Collection of regimental histories and personal narratives. These first-person accounts, compiled in the postwar period and early 20th Century, chronicle army life during the American Civil War. Source Library: Lost Cause Press. Coverage: 1860-1865. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History

These reports represent an attempt by the Adjutant General's Office to obtain more complete records of the service of the various Union generals serving in the Civil War. The Adjutant General requested that each such general submit "...a succinct account of your military history." Source Library: U.S. National Archives. Coverage: 1864-1887. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History

This collection is a mixture of issues and papers from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama ranging from 1861-1865. These newspapers "recorded the real and true history of public opinion during the war." Coverage: 1860-1865. Format: Primary Sources--Historical Newspapers & Periodicals Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History

Collection consists of items originating from prisoners held in German concentration camps, internment and transit camps, Gestapo prisons, and POW camps, during and just prior to World War II. Most of the collection consists of letters written or received by prisoners, but also includes receipts for parcels, money orders and personal effects; paper currency; and realia, including Star of David badges that Jews were forced to wear. Coverage: 1936-1945. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, World History, Ethnic & Area Studies

Between the 1920s & 1980s, the Justice Department and the FBI engaged in widespread investigation of those deemed politically suspect. This collection includes source materials for the major social movements and key figures in early twentieth century black history, and provides a window into the development of America's first systematic domestic surveillance apparatus. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Coverage: 1920-1984. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies, Politics & Government

The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was formed in 1946 by a merger of three groups with ties to the Communist Party: the International Labor Defense, the National Negro Congress, and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. The records in this collection represent the files of the national office of the CRC, including case files, publications, correspondence, etc. Coverage: 1946-1955. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

On November 3, 1979, a rally of black industrial workers and Communists was planned in Greensboro, North Carolina, against the Ku Klux Klan. During the rally, a caravan of Klansmen and members of the American Nazi Party drove by the area where the anti-Klan activists were congregating. The confrontation led to gunfire and the deaths of five protest marchers. This collection of documents from the FBI, local and state police, and other law enforcement agencies sheds new light on the motivations of the Communist organizers, the shootings, subsequent investigations, and efforts to heal the Greensboro community. Coverage: 1979-1981. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) was organized in London in August 1938 as a result of the Evian Conference of July 1938, which had been called by President Roosevelt to consider the problem of racial, religious, and political refugees from central Europe. Source Library: U.S. National Archives. Coverage: 1938-1947. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, World History, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

This collection contains extensive FBI documentation on James Meredith's battle to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962 and the white political and social backlash, including his correspondence with the NAACP and positive and negative letters he received from around the world during his ordeal. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Coverage: 1961-1962. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was the most controversial and contentious program of the Depression-era's Work Projects Administration, recognizing that journalists, playwrights and novelists were also unemployed. This collection presents the FWP publications of all 47 states involved in the project. Coverage: 1933-1943. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Literary Texts

This collection consists of the diaries, journals, and narratives of explorers, emigrants, military men, Native Americans, and travelers. In addition, there are accounts on the development of farming and mining communities, family histories, and folklore. These accounts provide information on the social, political, economic, scientific, religious and agricultural characteristics of the Appalachian region. Coverage: 1700-1950. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Sociology

This collection provides a unique look into the creation and activities of the temporary Emergency Court of Appeals, established by Congress and given exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of price control regulations under the Emergency Price Control Act of 1942. Coverage: 1941-1961. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Politics & Government

This collection contains materials related to the diplomatic and military response by the United States (as part of a multi-national force) to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Source Library: George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. Coverage: 1990-1991. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, World History, Politics & Government

This collection provides documentation collected by the FBI and chronicles the activities of the social movement organization The Republic of New Afrika (RNA), including activities of national and local leaders, power struggles within the organization, its growing militancy, and its affiliations with other Black militant organizations. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Headquarters Library. Coverage: 1968-1980. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

The Southern Literary Messenger enjoyed an impressive thirty-year run and was in its time the South's most important literary periodical. Scholars and students of history, journalism, and literature can discern much about how the hot-button topics of slavery and secession were presented in southern intellectual and literary culture in the early stages of the Civil War. Coverage: 1834-1864. Format: Primary Sources--Historical Newspapers & Periodicals Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Literary Texts

Contains clippings, correspondence, James Jackson's lectures, research notebooks, speeches, and writings (published and unpublished), internal documents pertaining to the Southern Negro Youth Congress and to Freedomways, materials pertaining to the Smith Act indictments of Jackson and other communists, Communist Party internal documents, and memorabilia and other biographical materials. Source Library: Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University. Coverage: 1932-2000. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies, Politics & Government

For those within the film industry, information and opinion were shaped by a number of aggressive trade publications, each competing for the same limited number of subscribers. Chief among these was the Moving Picture World, which reviewed current releases and published news, features, and interviews relating to all aspects of the industry. Coverage: 1907-1927. Format: Primary Sources--Historical Newspapers & Periodicals Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Film

This digital collection reviews U.S.-China relations in the post-Cold War Era, and analyzes the significance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, China's human rights issues, and resumption of World Bank loans to China in July 1990. Source Library: George H.W. Bush Presidential Library. Coverage: 1989-1993. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, World History, Politics & Government

Correspondence, reports and analyses, memos of conversations, and personal interviews exploring such themes as U.S.-Vatican relations, the Vatican's role in World War II, Jewish refugees, Italian anti-Jewish laws during the papacy of Pius XII, and the pope's personal knowledge of the treatment of European Jews. Source Library: U.S. National Archives. Coverage: 1940-1950. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, World History, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies

Until the Bureau of Indian Affairs was established in 1824, Indian affairs were under the control of the Secretary of War. This collection includes letters to and from the War Department, including correspondence from Indian superintendents, territorial & state governors, military commanders, Indians, missionaries, and other public and private individuals. Additional attachments include vouchers, receipts, depositions, contracts, newspapers, copies of speeches, passports for travel in the Indian country, etc. Source Library: U.S. National Archives. Coverage: 1800-1824. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Politics & Government

Freedom Riders rode interstate buses into the segregated South to test the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia, which outlawed racial segregation in terminals serving buses that crossed state lines. The Freedom Rides bolstered the credibility of the Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to violent disregard for the law in the southern United States. Source Library: Federal Bureau of Investigation Library. Coverage: 1961. Format: Primary Sources--Documents & Manuscripts Subject(s): Primary Sources, American History, Ethnic & Area Studies