Research Guides: Dissent in America: HIST 0849/0949: Find More Primary Sources

Primary-Source Collection Databases

The following databases include full-text primary source documents including letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs and other personal narratives, as well as government documents. Note that some of the resources also include secondary source and background material in addition to the primary source documents.

Temple Libraries has access to many more primary source databases. Contact me for help finding primary sources!

Black American History:

African American Communities This link opens in a new window
African American Communities focuses on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina, and offers pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories.
African American Experience This link opens in a new window
Excellent mix of primary and secondary material. Includes interviews with former slaves from the WPA Slaves Narratives Project.Other primary sources include audio clips, images, maps, and photographs.
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 This link opens in a new window
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 contains reproductions of FBI files documenting the federal scrutiny, harassment, and prosecution to which black Americans of all political persuasions were subjected. The collection provides coverage of: "Negro radicals" s; the FBI's infringement of First Amendment freedoms; and its preoccupation with black radicalism between 1920 and 1984.

Women's History:

North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
North American Women's Letters and Diaries Includes the personal experiences of women writing from Colonial times to 1950; represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (Scholar's Edition) This link opens in a new window
A database of 60+ document projects with 1,600+ primary documents & 20,000+ pages of additional secondary material including book reviews. Nice mixture of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources such as encyclopedias and bibliographies.

More Letters and Oral Histories:

Letters and Diaries Online This link opens in a new window
Letters and Diaries Online is an electronic archive of collections of letters, diaries, autobiographies, oral histories, and other personal narratives many never before published in print or electronic form dating from 1675 to the present.

Library of Congress Digital Collections

No search for primary-source materials is complete without a visit to the Library of Congress's Digital Collections. This vast collection can be keyword searched or browsed by topic, time period, or media types that include manuscripts, maps, motion pictures, photos, video recordings, and more.

Explore a map and timeline of the Library of Congress' Chronicling America Newspapers collection.

Urban Archives

Located on the first floor of Charles Library, the Urban Archives component of Temple University's Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) houses the Evening Bulletin and several other important Philadelphia newspaper "clippings collections," as well as a range of archival materials, critical to the study of the late nineteenth and twentieth century history of the Delaware Valley.

Students looking to find dissent-related primary source documents from Philadelphia are highly encouraged to visit the SCRC.