Finding Primary Sources

 

Searching in HOLLIS

To find books, periodicals, manuscripts, videos, etc., on a topic in HOLLIS, put in likely keywords and choose Library Catalog.  Look at pertinent records and find the terms under Subject. For example, searching for the keywords Reconstruction AND Jim Crow yields:

Stony the road: reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow. [New York] : Penguin Books, 2020. 296 p. HOLLIS record.
Subjects:

  • African Americans -- Segregation -- History
  • Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
  • African Americans -- History -- 1863-1877
  • African Americans -- History -- 1877-1964
  • White supremacy movements -- United States -- History
  • Racism in popular culture -- United States -- History
  • Visual communication -- Social aspects -- United States -- History
  • United States -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century
  • United States -- Race relations -- History -- 20th century
     

Under Refine my results: Subject on the right of the results list there are more main terms (Southern States, Racism, Race discrimination) to try, but not the terms after the dashes ( -- History; -- Social aspects) which are called subdivisions. NOTE: If you hit one of the terms in this Subject list, HOLLIS will find records with the term, say Racism, only on records in the set originally formed by searching Reconstruction AND Jim Crow.

Redo your search using the terms that HOLLIS uses. Also, go to Starts with.../Browse (in the menu at the top of the page) and put in, for example, United States -- Race relations adjusting to Browse by Subject.  This is very useful in breaking down a large subject and in giving you more subdivisions, which can be applied to other Subject terms, to search.

Whenever you have a reference to a useful book, look it up in HOLLIS and see what the Subject terms are.

Any pertinent book published during your era may be a primary source, but certain kinds of primary sources, including originally unpublished sources such as letters and diaries published later, have particular terms attached to their Subject terms in a HOLLIS record.  Change Any field to Subject for cleanest results.   

  • --Archives
  • --Correspondence
  • --Description and travel
  • --Diaries
  • --Manuscripts
  • --Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
  • --Personal narratives (refers to accounts of wars and diseases only)
  • --Sources (usually refers to collections of published primary sources)

Example:
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
AND
Archives OR Correspondence OR Diaries OR Manuscripts OR Sources OR Narratives (as Subject)

When you find a pertinent book, go to Starts With.../Browse and put in the call number, adjusting the menu to Library of Congress (Wid-LC) or Other. This shows you other books on the same subject, even though they may be in storage or checked out.

See the Library Research Guide for History and the HOLLIS Help guide for more information on searching HOLLIS.

Digital Libraries

General

HathiTrust Digital Library is a huge collection of digitized books and periodicals. Each full text item is linked to a standard library catalog record, thus providing good metadata and subject terms. HathiTrust Digital Library is a huge collection of digitized books and periodicals.  Most items pre-1925 will be full text viewable.  After 1925, a much smaller number will be full text viewable.  You can search within non-full text viewable works and obtain the pages numbers where your search terms occur.   Most US government documents will be full text viewable.

Internet Archive searches full text for a variety of digitized print materials and archived web pages (Wayback Machine), as well as manuscripts (a few), digitized microfilm, films, audio files, TV News, and more.

Digital Public Library of America offers textual, visual, and sound resources contributed by numerous libraries, archives, and museums. Searches catalog records, not full text.

Digital Libraries by State: These websites list hundreds of local,. state, and regional resources.

Subject-specific

Umbra Search - a digital library of African American history

ProQuest History Vault: American Politics and Society includes

  • Progressive Era: Reform, Regulation, and Rights (1872-1934)
  • Progressive Era: Voices of Reform (1875-1945) 
  • Immigration: Records of the INS, 1880-1930  Search this Module Browse Collections

The Gilded Age (1865-1902) offers manuscripts, photographs, cartoons, government documents, songs, ephemera, etc., together with critical essays on selected primary sources.

Behind the Veil (Duke) offers interviews, photographs, and oral histories concerning African-American the South, largely 1890s-1970s

Afro-Americana imprints, 1535-1922 from the Library Company of Philadelphia (part of America's historical imprints) (Harvard login)

Black thought and culture: African Americans to 1975 (Harvard login)

ProQuest History Vault  Black Freedom Struggle I (1901-1975): (Harvard login) 37 collections from the records of U.S. federal government agencies, including Peonage Files of the U.S. Department of Justice,1901-1945; Department of Justice Classified Subject Files on Civil Rights, 1914-1949; New Deal Agencies and Black America; Records of the Tuskegee Airmen; President Truman's Committee on Civil Rights, Papers of the NAACP.

Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America

Race & Place: An African American Community in the Jim Crow South Charlottesville,Virginia

African American Communities contains newspapers, oral histories, records, pamphlets, photographs, and other primary source materials from African American communities (mostly from Atlanta, Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and areas of North Carolina).

The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive from the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project documents anti-Black killings during America’s Jim Crow era.

The Negro Motorist Green Book, by Victor Hugo Green. New York: Victor Hugo Green, 1936-1966. 

  • Intended to guide traveling African Americans in the Jim Crow era.

Government Documents

HeinOnline U.S. Congressional Documents  provides full-text access to the published debates, proceedings and speeches of the U.S. Congress, including the Annals of Congress(1789-1824), Register of Debates (1824-1837), Congressional Globe (1833-1873) and the Congressional Record (1873 to present).

ProQuest Congressional provides full-text access to Committee Hearings, House and Senate Documents, House and Senate Reports, Senate Executive Reports, Senate Executive Treaty Documents, Legislative Histories, Serial Set Maps, Serial Set. More information.

Freedmen's Bureau:

Images

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Images of America: a history of American life in images and texts is the online version of thousands of books in the Arcadia US local history series. The histories Includes photographs from archives, historical societies and private collections. Images and text are fully searchable. 

Law

Hein Online Legal Journal Collection offers full-text of many law reviews and journals, most starting with volume 1 and extending in some cases to the present. Book reviews, notices, advertisements, etc., are included.

Historic U.S. court cases: an encyclopedia, ed. by John W. Johnson. New York : Routledge, 2001.  (2 volumes) Information on a wide range of cases, both federal and nonfederal. Available online via Internet Archive. 

LLMC Digital. The collections offered by this vast digital library can be browsed under: Browse Collections. Can be useful for state legal materials.

Magazines

African-American Periodicals, 1825-1995; (Harvard login) Includes some 170 periodicals by and about African Americans: academic and political journals, commercial magazines, institutional newsletters, organizations’ bulletins, annual reports, and other genres, including African Repository (Washington, DC, 1825-1892), The Black Warrior (Fort Parapet, LA, 1864), El Mulato (New York, NY, 1954), Pennsylvania Freedmen's Bulletin (Philadelphia, PA, 1865), Southern Workman (Hampton, VA, 1865-1939), Bay Area Report (Oakland, CA, 1982).

Ethnic NewsWatch (1960- ; some content back to late 1950s) is a full text database of the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. (Harvard login)

The Crisis (1910- ), the official publication of the NAACP

The Freedman. Boston, American Tract Society, Jan. 1864-Mar. 1869. HOLLIS record

Other freed persons periodicals in HOLLIS

Newspapers

African American newspapers, 1827-1998 (Harvard login)

African American newspapers: the 19th century (Harvard login)

ProQuest Historical Newspapers include illustrations, editorials, and advertising. African-American papers are listed below.

All or several of the ProQuest Historical Newspapers can be searched at once from the ProQuest Databases page: from any of the individual ProQuest Historical Newspapers pages, hit the "Searching; 1 database" link, scroll down to the ProQuest Historical Newspapers section and select the ones you want.

Ethnic NewsWatch (1960- ) is a full text database of the newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. (Harvard login)

Historical African American Newspapers Available Online

Documenting White Supremacy and its Opponents collection includes papers promoting and opposing white nationalism, published mainly in the 1920s. It brings together for the first time local, regional, and national newspapers published by Klan organizations and by sympathetic publishers from across the U.S. It also includes key anti-Klan voices from newspapers published by American Black, Catholic, and Jewish communities.

Personal Writings, Oral Histories, & Interviews

Writings in which people reflect or report on their own lives and experiences are called personal writings.  They are sometimes written for publication (autobiographies, memoirs) and sometimes for private use (diaries, letters, although diaries are sometimes written with an eye to publication) and published posthumously.  Personal narratives are usually accounts of wars or diseases.

Find personal writings or interviews in HOLLIS by searching for your topic with an appropriate keyword or subject term and the following terms as subjects:

  • sources
  • diaries
  • narratives
  • correspondence
  • interviews
  • oral histories/oral history

Example search: "jim crow" AND (sources OR diaries OR narratives OR correspondence OR interviews OR "oral histor*")

The HistoryMakers contains interviews with African Americans about all aspects of American history (Harvard login)

Who Speaks for the Negro?: An archival collection of interviews conducted for Robert Penn Warren's seminal book

North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories (1800-1950.) includes 342 authors and approximately 37,500 pages of information, illustrating what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada.