Guide to Primary Sources

Approximately twelve hours of opinions recorded in the days and months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor from more than two hundred individuals in cities and towns across the United States.

Online archive has collected over 100k presidential documents, including inaugural addresses, executive orders, party platforms, and more.

Database of and index to 5000+ full text, audio and video versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two.

This 13,000 page reference center is dedicated to providing information to the general public on African American history and on the history of the more than one billion people of African ancestry around the world. Includes full text primary documents, and major speeches of black activists and leaders from the 18th Century to the present.

Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.

Interviews, images, and documents preserving the testimonies of Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps in the US during WW2.

This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s.

UNC's digital collection of texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.

Includes documents from ancient and medieval times, plus some 20th century voice & video recordings. Mostly Western civilization, US & Europe (England, especially).

Indexes collections of audio recordings/spoken word collections from partner institutions.

More than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Most recordings are musical but there are also a significant number of spoken word recordings and speeches.

The Scripps Library, through cooperation with various presidential libraries, has been collecting some of the most important presidential speeches in American history. These speeches all have transcripts, and some are available in their entirety in audio or video.

The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom.

Archive of Terkel's interviews with major figures in 20th century history from his 45 years of being a radio host.