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Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896–2016*
This collection offers access to more than 100 years of this major UK national newspaper, viewable in full digital facsimile form, with copious advertisements, news stories, and images that capture twentieth-century culture and society, providing an important alternative perspective to other newspapers such as the Times (London).
Associated Press Collections Online: European Bureaus
From Vienna, its chief listening post, and also from Prague and Warsaw, the Associated Press (AP) covered Eastern Europe during World War II and the Cold War. This collection is composed almost entirely of rare wire copy, recording the declining influence of the Soviet Union, the last days of the Iron Curtain, and the political and economic restructuring of the former Soviet satellites.
Associated Press Collections Online: Middle East Bureaus
Middle East Bureaus offers access to records from some of the Associated Press’s (AP) most active international bureaus – Jerusalem, Ankara, and Beirut, as well as their surrounding areas – delivering the exclusive stories behind the headlines from 1967 to 2005.
State Papers Online Colonial Asia, Part I: Far East, Hong Kong, and Wei-Hai-Wei
The first part of this major new digitization program brings British Colonial Office files (CO series), many of which were once confidential, to a global research audience. These records bear witness to the two very different sides of the colonial relationship: a British government whose main priority was the acquisition of commodities, wealth, and labor; and the local people living under imperial rule and British-style institutions for law, health, education, policing, defense, agriculture, and industry.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Part II
Expanding Eighteenth Century Collections Online, the titles in Part II have an emphasis on literature, social science, and religion. This second edition includes nearly fifty thousand titles and seven million pages from the library holdings of the British Library, the Bodleian Library, University of Cambridge, the National Library of Scotland, and the Ransom Center at the University of Texas.
Archives of Sexuality and Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part II
Fully searchable periodicals, newsletters, manuscripts, government records, organizational papers, correspondence, an international selection of posters, and other primary source materials for this milestone digital program were selected by an advisory board consisting of leading scholars and librarians in sexuality and gender studies.
Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History
A database that brings hand-curated content from Smithsonian experts directly to classrooms and students. Curriculum-aligned material from trusted sources easily satisfies requirements to incorporate primary source content into US history classes.
The Making of the Modern World, Part III: 1890–1945
The Making of the Modern World: Part III, 1890-1945 takes The Making of the Modern World series deeper into the twentieth century covering the key events that have shaped the modern world. Beyond the study of economic thought, the collection provides an invaluable resource for the studying of social forces unleashed by the economy.
Chatham House Online Archive: Module 2: 1980–2008
Module 2 of this series with Chatham House contains high-level analysis and research on global trends and key events and issues from the latter part of Cold War to the War on Terror.
British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900
This collection contains 47 regional and local newspapers that illuminate diverse and distinct regional attitudes, cultures, and vernaculars, providing an alternative viewpoint to the London-centric national press.
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Political Relations, 1945-1949
Japan in the summer of 1945 was a nation totally exhausted by war. The Allied Occupation, dedicated to political and social reform, thoroughly transformed the country in a remarkably short period of time. This is one of three digital collections based on the microfilm title Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to United States Political Relations with Japan, 1930-1954. The source material contains Decimal File 711.94.
County and Regional Histories & Atlases: California
State and especially local history gives students a chance to understand the people, places and things around them with which they’re already familiar. Originally compiled and produced by publishers and subscriptions agents for area residents and patrons, the original histories are difficult-to-find materials. Included in this collection on Ohio are 21 cities and regions covered in 305 titles. These titles comprise tables and lists of vital statistics, military service records, municipal and county officers, chronologies, portraits of individuals, and views of urban and rural life not found anywhere else. The atlases provide additional information on land use, settlement patterns, and scarce early town and city plans.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
These files document an important moment in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances [i.e. outlawed racial segregation] in relation to interstate transportation restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. However, the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South. The Freedom Riders set out to challenge this status quo by riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses. The first Freedom Ride began on May 5, 1961. Led by CORE Director James Farmer, 13 riders (seven black, six white) left Washington, D.C., on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending with a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana. Only minor trouble was encountered in Virginia and North Carolina, but some of the Riders were arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Winnsboro, South Carolina. Mob violence in Birmingham, Alabama would attempt to end this first Freedom Ride.
War on Poverty: Office of Civil Rights, 1965-1968
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs proposed or enacted on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. Johnson launched an "unconditional war on poverty" in the first months of his presidency with the goal of eliminating hunger and deprivation from American life. The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs. The OEO reflected a fragile consensus among policymakers that the best way to deal with poverty was not simply to raise the incomes of the poor but to help them better themselves through education, job training, and community development. Historians have suggested that the most important domestic achievement of the Great Society may have been its success in translating some of the demands of the civil rights movement into law. The collection contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes of meetings, convention programs, and other records concerning the activities of Maurice Dawkins, Assistant Director for Civil Rights in the Office of Economic Opportunity. Reports, assessments, and background documents also include: Justice Department Task Force on Civil Rights, 1968; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Report on Ghettoes, 1967; Poor People’s Campaign and OEO, 1968; civil rights and the anti-poverty war; application of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Equal Employment Opportunities and the U.S. Civil Service Commission; OEO reports on Job Corps centers; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings in Montgomery, Ala., for 1968; and 1967 Booz-Allen & Hamilton report on statewide education study in Mississippi. Files contain information regarding civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr; Roy Wilkins; Whitney Young; and Andrew Young. This publication consists of documents comprising RG 381, Records of the Community Services Administration, Records of the Office of Civil Rights, Program Records of the Assistant Director for Civil Rights, November 1965-December 1968, MLR Entry 1005. All documents were originally filmed in their entirety.
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations, 1910-1949
This archive reproduces microfilm of the U.S. Department of State Decimal Files 611.94 and 6194.11. The documents trace the commercial relations between the United States and Japan over the course of almost half a century in the years 1910-1929, 1930-1939, 1940-1944, and 1945-1949. The files are predominantly instructions to -- and dispatches from -- diplomatic and consular officials. Notes between the Department of State and foreign diplomats in the United States; memoranda prepared by State Department officials; and correspondence with officials of other government departments, private businesses, and persons are also featured. Subjects include: advertising, aircraft, commerce, customs administration, drug regulations, duties, embargo, free ports, landing certificates, law, markets, merchandise, prison made goods, pure food and drug regulations, smuggling, tariff treaties, export and import trade, undervaluation of imported merchandise, among many other topics.
Electing the President: Proceedings of the Republican National Conventions, 1856-1988
The collection includes the proceedings for 1856-1988 of the Republican National Conventions, providing gavel to gavel coverage of the conventions, including speeches, debates, votes, and party platforms. Also included are lists of names of convention delegates and alternates. Records of the earliest proceedings are based in part on contemporary newspaper accounts.
John L. LeFlore (1903–1976) was the most significant figure in the struggle for black equality in Mobile, Alabama, throughout southern Alabama and Mississippi, and along the Florida Gulf Coast. Materials in the collection document LeFlore's prolific work in both public and private life. LeFlore was the first African American appointed to the Housing Board and, with J. Gary Cooper, was the first African American elected to the state legislature from Mobile since Reconstruction. The bulk of the materials date between 1961 and 1975.
George H. W. Bush and Foreign Affairs: The Moscow Summit and the Dissolution of the USSR
When George H. W. Bush became president in 1989 the United States had already begun to see a thawing of relations with the Soviet Union. President Bush spoke of softening relations in his inaugural address, claiming that "a new breeze is blowing," and adding that "great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom." This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the events leading up to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and its implications for U.S.-Soviet relations. The collection consists of three FOIA files from the Bush Library. The first file contains material related to the Moscow summit and the coup in August 1991 against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. This file contains cables sent to the White House situation room concerning day-by-day developments, and conversations between President Bush and other foreign leaders. The second file, which concerns the dissolution of the Soviet Union, highlights the Bush administration’s response to the dissolution and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Documents here concern economic and humanitarian support, diplomatic recognition of the republics, aiding the transition to democratic governments and market economies, and defense issues, particularly the fate and control over the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. The last FOIA file contains materials on the meeting between President Bush and President Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta (December 2–3, 1989) and the subsequent meetings between President Bush and NATO leaders in Brussels (December 3– 4, 1989).
FBI File: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
This archive covers the trial of Julia and Ethel Rosenberg, a nondescript couple accused in 1950 by the U.S. government of operating a Soviet spy network and giving the Soviet Union plans for the atomic bomb. The trial of the Rosenbergs, which began in March 6, 1951, became a political event of greater importance than any damage they may have done to the United States. It was one of the most controversial trials of the twentieth century. After months in prison the Rosenbergs maintained their innocence and began to write poignant letters, which were widely published, protesting their treatment. A movement began to protest the “injustice” of the Rosenberg trial. In the months between the sentencing and execution, criticism of the trial grew more strident, and major demonstrations were held. Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, called the case “a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation.” In spite of attempts at appeal and a temporary state of execution by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953. Both refused to confess. Their guilt and the harshness of their sentences continue to be vigorously debated. Recent studies of the couple’s activities show that the evidence against them was overwhelming. It is difficult, however, to imagine the execution of a married couple with young children without understanding the paranoia the Cold War produced. Since the early 1950s the Rosenbergs have been viewed by many as martyrs, conveniently sacrificed by an iniquitous United States in the name of anticommunism.
In February 1945 Uruguay signed the Declaration by United Nations and officially declared war on the Axis power, although it did not participate in any actual fighting. Prior to 1945, Uruguay came to the attention of the world as the final resting place of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled in the port of Montevideo in December 1939 following the Battle of the River Plate. During the Second World War and the Korean War, Uruguay saw economic prosperity supplying beef, wool, and leather to the Allies. Juan José de Amézaga Landaroso, President from 1943-1947, led his country through the closing years of the Second World War. From 1952-1967, the presidency was effectively abolished and a nine-member National Council of Government (Consejo Nacional de Gobierno) was established in its place. The “presidency” rotated among the members of the majority party, with presidents serving annual terms. The idea behind this collegiate body (colegiado) was that it would lower the risk of a dictatorship emerging. Publications relating to political relations between the United States and other states generally include cables, memoranda, and correspondence addressing the political affairs and concerns affecting the particular state. Covering primarily the early Cold War documents, this collection gives researchers a unique insight into American foreign policy during one of its most stressful periods in international relations. After World War II, with only two superpowers vying for influence, access, and control, the United States looked to its state department to provide detailed analyses and insight into political affairs. As such these records are bound to be of great interest to diplomatic historians and historians studying these countries, seeking to understand American foreign affairs during this period.