Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases
HathiTrust

History Vault
Digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and other primary source materials.

• American Indians and the American West
• American Politics and Society
• Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle
• International Relations and Military Conflicts
• Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War
• Women's Studies
• Workers and Labor Unions
Gale Primary Sources
Newspapers, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs. Simultaneously search: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Sunday Times (London), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), Making of the Modern World, Times Literary Supplement, and Times Digital Archive, Financial Times (London).
Black Thought and Culture
Collection of non-fiction writings of leading African-Americans. Includes interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets, letters and other fugitive material.
Women's Studies Archive
Diaries, letters, photographs, news clippings, organizational records, and journals. History of the social, political, and professional aspects of women's lives and the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society.
Coverage: 19th and 20th centuries.
Women and Social Movements in the United States
Document projects and archives, including book, film, and website reviews, notes from the archives, and teaching tools; organized around the history of women in social movements.
Coverage: 1600-2000.
African American Communities
Pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports, and in-depth oral histories reveal the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity. Focuses predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina.
Independent Voices
Alternative press journals, magazines, and newspapers covering feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Latinx, gays, lesbians, etc.
Coverage: 1951-2015.
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975
Explores the dynamic period of social, political, and cultural change in the U.S. and U.K., covering such topics as music and television, the Vietnam war, student protests, the civil rights movement, and women's liberation. Includes the Social Protest Collection from UC Berkeley, a wide range of zines and alternative press publications, posters, and multimedia.
Coverage: 1950-1975.
Proquest Congressional Publications
U.S. Congressional materials (hearings, bills, Congressional Record and compiled legislative histories) and Executive Branch documents.
Race Relations in America
Speeches, reports, surveys, and analyses produced by the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries based at Fisk University.
Coverage: 1943-1970.
Rock's Backpages
Archive of music journalism: articles, reviews, and interviews from mainstream music publications and zines. Audio interviews.

HathiTrust
Digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries, established in this repository to archive and share their digital content.
Access Note: VU is a partner institution. Login is required for downloading. Tutorial: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/HathiTrustAccess