Most of the databases and websites linked on this page allow you to search the full text of the primary sources they contain. However, for this to be effective, you need to search using the terms that people at the time would have used. For instance, in the nineteenth century, people did not generally use the term “racism.” But if you look for “color prejudice” or “colorphobia,” you will get more hits.
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If specific places are important to your case, consider investigating primary sources related to those locations. For instance, if you were doing an exhibit on Plessy v. Ferguson, you might note that the case involved a Louisiana state law mandating segregated train cars, and that Homer Plessy, the plaintiff in the case, was from New Orleans. That could lead you to sources connected to Louisiana and/or New Orleans.
Local, state, or regional historical societies, museums, and libraries
If you have a place in mind, you might consider searching the internet for that place name plus “historical society” or “history museum” or a similar search string. Many local, state, or regional historical societies, museums, and libraries have online exhibits or digitized collections that can help you understand the place better. Experiment with different search terms; it might take a few tries to find good material. For instance, for the Plessy example, I Googled “Louisiana History Museum,” which took me to a museum in Central Louisiana without much online content. When I tried “New Orleans historical society,” the first result was the Historic New Orleans Collection, which includes a wealth of digitized material (including material related to Plessy).
Historical maps
As we saw in our visit to the archives, maps can be revealing primary sources. Just make sure, in incorporating your map into your exhibit, you show how the map is a source that offers a particular interpretation of the place it purports to represent. A map is not a transparent picture of the place. The following are some notable online map collections:
You can use newspapers and magazines to explore how journalists and editors covered particular cases as they were unfolding or after they were decided. If your case didn’t get much media coverage, you can also use the periodical press to explore how the issues involved in your case were covered by the media. For instance, Plessy’s case was a response to the Louisiana Separate Car Act, so you could try searching for that act in the periodical databases. Or just try searching “Separate Car.” If you want to look at what people were saying about segregation in 1896, you might need to figure out what terms people were using at the time to talk about segregation: “separate but equal”? “Jim Crow”? And for more recent cases, you are welcome to try YouTube or another similar site for audio or video media.
Including items with visual interest, such as images and objects, can make your site more appealing to its audience. Some sites with especially good image collections are listed below, though many of the sites and databases listed in other sections include images as well.
Visual, material, and print culture items from across the Smithsonian Institution (the national collection of museums, mostly in Washington, D.C.), all of which can be used free of charge and without permission.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
Image collections on various themes from the Library of Congress. Images are downloadable in high resolution.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Over a million digitized items, including many photographs and other images, on an enormous variety of topics.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Millions of full-text, fully searchable pages of primary source material covering a wide range of topics from the 1800s. Includes books, pamphlets, essays, photographs, newspapers, letters, maps, sheet music and more.
Social and Cultural History: Letters and Diaries Online (1675 - Present)
Collection of primary source documents drawn from letters, diaries, and oral histories. This database pulls together content from North American Women's Letters and Diaries, British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries, North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories, The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries, and Black Thought and Culture.
Library of Congress: Digital Collections
Curated collections on a wide array of topics, such as photographs relating Japanese American internment, political pamphlets by African Americans, documents from the Constitutional convention, and much, much more.
Documenting the American South
From the University of North Carolina Library, featuring digitized copies of numerous books and pamphlets. Do not be misled by the title; not all the documents are from the South, but many relate to topics significant to Southern history, such as slavery and emancipation.
Legal and diplomatic history documents, such as constitutions and treaties, hosted by Yale Law School.
Slaves and the Judiciary, 1740-1860
From the Library of Congress, a collection of materials about slavery and the law.
Recollection: A Civil Rights Legal Archive
This is the archive of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), founded in 1940 by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The LDF has been involved in many of the landmark civil rights cases of the 20th and early 21st centuries. If you are doing a case relating to civil rights from 1940 or later, it’s worth looking in this archive to see if there is relevant material.
See also the sites “Slaves and the Judiciary” and “Recollection: A Civil Rights Legal Archive” under Law and the Courts.
Slavery and Antislavery (1700 - 1888)
Primary documents on slavery and abolitionism from several important archives.
Covering approximately 1830 to 1865, this primary source collection details the extensive work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to and during the Civil War.
ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers
You can search just the "Historical Black Newspapers" portion of the Proquest Historical Newspapers collection. This includes the Chicago Defender, the Los Angeles Sentinel, the New York Amsterdam News, and the Pittsburgh Courier.
African American Newspapers, Series 1
Collection of more than 280 Black newspapers, mostly from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Many of the titles include are short-lived and come from smaller cities and communities. This site is great for accessing Black experiences in less-studied places. For big city papers, check the historical Black newspapers in ProQuest Historical Newspapers. For the early-to-mid 19th century, use the collection of African American newspapers in Accessible Archives.
Collection of newspaper articles on a wide variety of topics related to African American history. Searchable and also browsable by time period and topic. Each time period in the “Suggested Searches” section has a “Laws and Legislation” section that is especially pertinent.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States
Collection of a variety of both published and unpublished primary sources related to Black history, particularly in the realm of civil rights. An especially nice feature of this site is that it allows you to browse subjects by time period. There is extensive material related to legal cases here, especially from the Jim Crow era to the present.
Freedmen and Southern Society Project
An ambitious project to document the experiences of freedpeople through primary sources from the National Archives. This website includes a subset of the 50,000 documents selected for publication; for a larger collection, see the multiple volumes published in print and listed on the FSSP homepage.
See also the links under Immigration History and History of the American West.
Asian American and Pacific Islander Materials: A Resource Guide
The “External Resources” page of this guide produced by the Library of Congress contains links to sites with archival material relevant to Hmong-, Japanese-, Korean-, South Asian-, and Southeast Asian-American history.
Asian American Studies: Princeton University Library Research Guide
The “Digital Sources” section under “Primary Sources” lists publicly accessible websites.
Chinese Historical Society of America
Go to “Collections” under “Collections” to access primary materials (especially visual and material culture). You can limit your search to “Archives,” “Objects,” or “Photos,” if you wish.
Japanese American National Museum
Under “Explore,” go to “Museum Collections” or “Online Exhibitions” to find primary source materials. The museum has many materials related to Japanese-American wartime incarceration.
South Asian American Digital Archive
Go to “Browse the Archive” under “Explore” to find sources. This archive skews toward the more recent past.
Indigenous Studies, Princeton University Library
Digitized sources, including images and objects.
Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
Guide to digital collections available at the Library of Congress.
Native American Studies: Digital Collections
Curated by the University of California, Berkeley. Includes many links to sites that are freely accessible.
Archive of Native American Recorded History
Oral histories conducted with Indigenous people.
American Indian Digital History Project
Periodicals, photographs, and other sources relating to Native history, from the University of Kansas.
See also the links under Immigration History and History of the American West.
Hispanic/Latino Heritage at the National Archives
Arranged topically, this site is especially strong on images. For additional information about Latine materials at the National Archives, see this blog post.
Latina/o/x Studies: Princeton University Library Research Guide
See the sites listed under “Beyond Princeton” for references to many online sources for Latine history.
Latina(o) Cultural Heritage Archives
From California State University Northridge, this archive focuses on Latinos and Chicanos in Southern California. Small collection but includes some materials related to law.
A project of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, this site is mostly geared toward teachers. But if you click on “Timeline,” you can explore the documents collected on the site.
Immigration in the United States, 1789-1930
A collection from Harvard’s archives, “documenting voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression.” Click on the link just below the title to get to page where you can either browse or search the collection.
These sites are potential resources for Indigenous, Asian American, and Latine histories.
California Digital Newspaper Collection
Collection of newspapers from all over California, mostly from late 19th and 20th centuries. The search function can be slow. There is also an option to browse.
This catalog agglomerates materials from libraries, museums, and archives across California. Not all the materials cataloged here are available digitally. However, the search function gives you the option to limit to items available online.
This work by the Reed College Library is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International License.
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