New sites saved on our delicious page, and new post on the resources blog

John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Digital Archives
The Digital Archives provides access to a growing collection of searchable digitized historical documents, images and materials. Archivists at the JFK Library are working to digitize and make available to the public all of our archival and museum holdings, beginning with the papers of President John F. Kennedy and his administration.
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database has information on almost 35,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. You can search and browse the database by voyage and by names.
Google News Archive
Listing and full-text access to thousands of newspaper issues digitised by Google, including many American titles from the 19th and 20th centuries. Once you click on a title, you can browse the page images via a chronology.
Doris Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History (University of Oklahoma)
he Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History online provides access to typescripts of interviews (1967 -1972) conducted with hundreds of Indians in Oklahoma regarding the histories and cultures of their respective nations and tribes. Related are accounts of Indian ceremonies, customs, social conditions, philosophies, and standards of living. Members of every tribe resident in Oklahoma were interviewed. The collection includes the original tapes on which the interviews were recorded, as well as microfiche copies of the typescripts. The digital representation of the typescripts are organized by tribe but may be searched by interviewee, by interviewer, by tape number, or by keyword searching of the full-text of the transcript.
Top 50 American History Blogs (History Masters)
A listing of some recommended blogs covering all periods of American history (and some more global ones too).
University of Mississippi Libraries Digital Collections
Portal to the Digital Collections from the University of Mississippi Libraries. Collections include: Civil War Archive, Integration at the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State Textbook Purchasing Board Minutes, United States v Mississippi Interogatory Answers, Mississippi Women Suffrage Association, CK Berryman cartoons (of Senator Pat Harrison), Presidential Debate Collection Photographs (Obama v McCain), Elijah Fleming Collection and Class of 1861.
Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake – Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective (ebook download)
Supplementary reading for MSt US History week 1 HT.
Mapping America – Census Bureau 2005-9 American Community Survey – NYTimes.com
Interactive maps showing local data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2005-2009 across the US. Maps are available for race & ethnicity, income, housing & families, and education.
North Carolina Digital Repository
The North Carolina Digital Collections is a collaborative effort, bringing together items held in the physical collections of the State Archives and State Library of North Carolina. The primary focus is on documentary and state government information from and about North Carolina.
A map of American slavery
One of the most important maps of the Civil War was also one of the most visually striking: the United States Coast Survey’s map of the slaveholding states, which clearly illustrates the varying concentrations of slaves across the South. Abraham Lincoln loved the map and consulted it often; it even appears in a famous 1864 painting of the president and his cabinet.
“Transnations” Among “Transnations”? The Debate on Transnational History in the United States and Germany
Core reading for week 1 Hilary Term, MSt US History

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And while I’m posting anyway, here’s a quick reminder about the VHL resources blog, which now has a new post on accessing US newspapers in Oxford.  Also, don’t forget that as of tomorrow we are open on Saturdays throughout Hilary Term, 10am-2pm!

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Examination Days: The New York African Free School Collection
In 1787, at a time when slavery was crucial to the prosperity and expansion of New York, the New York African Free School was created by the New York Manumission Society, a group dedicated to advocating for African Americans. The school’s explicit mission was to educate black children to take their place as equals to white American citizens. It began as a single-room schoolhouse with about forty students, the majority of whom were the children of slaves, and by the time it was absorbed into the New York City public school system in 1835, it had educated thousands of children, a number of whom went on to become well known in the United States and Europe. The New-York Historical Society’s New York African Free School Collection preserves a rich selection of student work and community commentary about the school.
Alexander Hamilton . Document Database | The New-York …
A collection of previously unpublished manuscript documents by, to, or about Alexander Hamilton; that is, all manuscripts we have located that were not published in the major collections of Alexander Hamilton’s papers, including The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, edited by Harold C. Syrett (New York, Columbia University Press, 1961-1987), and The Law Practice of Alexander Hamilton: Documents and Commentary, edited by Julius Goebel, Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964-1981). The images and transcripts provided here are documents from the New-York Historical Society and the Gilder Lehrman Collection.
Witness to the Early American Experience
The digital images of historical documents in this archive preserve the words of hundreds of eyewitnesses to the American Revolution in and around New York City. The letters, newspapers, broadsides, legal records, and maps presented here record events from the early years of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam through the British occupation of the city during the Revolution.
Civil War Treasures from the New-York Historical Society …
The images in this digital collection are drawn from the New-York Historical Society’s rich archival collections that document the Civil War. They include recruiting posters for New York City regiments of volunteers; stereographic views documenting the mustering of soldiers and of popular support for the Union in New York City; photography showing the war’s impact, both in the north and south; and drawings and writings by ordinary soldiers on both sides.
New-York Historical Society Slavery Collections
The library of the New-York Historical Society holds among its many resources a substantial collection of manuscript materials documenting American slavery and the slave trade in the Atlantic world. The fourteen collections on this web site are among the most important of these manuscript collections. They consist of diaries, account books, letter books, ships’ logs, indentures, bills of sale, personal papers, and records of institutions. Some of the highlights of these collections include the records of the New York Manumission Society and the African Free School, the diaries and correspondence of English abolitionists Granville Sharp and John Clarkson, the papers of the Boston anti-slavery activist Lysander Spooner, the records of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the draft of Charles Sumner’s famous speech The Anti-Slavery Enterprise, and an account book kept by the slave trading firm Bolton, Dickens & Co.
Nixon Library Virtual Library
The Nixon Library makes available almost 50 million pages of documents, over 300,000 photographs, thousands of motion pictures and videos, and the Nixon White House Tapes. Includes some of the Watergate tapes and some online exhibits
Digital Commonwealth: Massachusetts Collections Online
Digital Commonwealth is an online finding aid to digital collections held in a variety of institutions, libraries and archives throughout Massachusetts. You can browse by subject and location (via a map) as well as search. Records link through to the full-text/image on the owning institution’s site.
Letters of Delegates to Congress 1774-1789
The twenty-six volumes of the Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 aims to make available all the documents written by delegates that bear directly upon their work during their years of actual service in the First and Second Continental Congresses, 1774-1789.
American Archives: Documents of the American Revolution, 1774 …
A massive collection of documents from 1774-1776 that deal with everything from the conflict with Britain, the process of state creation, political philosophies, the state of the economy, military engagements, clashes between patriots and loyalists, to the lives of ordinary farmers, artisans, slaves, and women. Only 2 of 5 series were ever published. Selections are available online. The VHL holds the print volumes in the stack.
University of Vermont Libraries Center for Digital Initiatives
The University of Vermont (UVM) Libraries’ Center for Digital Initiatives (CDI) makes unique digital collections available for researchers at UVM and beyond. These collections may be digitized or born digital and may include documents, photographs, data, artifacts, audiovisual materials, and more. Collections can be searched or browsed and include congressional papers and speeches from Vermont members of Congress, photographs, manuscripts and even recipes.
Official Intelligence Documents (Federation of American Scientists)
The Intelligence Resource Program of the Federation of American Scientists has collected together a large number of intelligence-related documents from the US Governmnent, including directives from the CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense, Congressional Reports, and Presidential directives, from the Truman administration up to Obama.
DISUNION – Opinionator Blog – NYTimes.com
The New York Times blogs the Civil War. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.
Congressional Hearings – Law Library of Congress (Library of Congress)
The Law Library of Congress has partnered with Google to digitise and make available their collection of 75,000 Congressional Committee Hearings. Three selective collections have been compiled and are available already as a taster: on the census, Freedom of information/privacy, and Immigration
New York City Subway Photos – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com
100 years of photos of the New York subway, from 1910-2010
Gottlieb Jazz Photos – a set on Flickr
Celebrated jazz artists come to life in photographs by William P. Gottlieb. His images document the jazz scene in New York City and Washington, D.C., from 1938 to 1948, a time recognized by many as the “Golden Age of Jazz”. The Library of Congress is in the process of adding all 1,600 images to Flickr.

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Hawaii War Records Depository Photos
The HWRD contains a wealth of photographs that document the impact of World War II in Hawaii, including 880 wartime photos taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the U.S. Navy. Taken between 1941 and 1946, these photographs are an important resource depicting the military activities in Hawaii, as well as the military’s relationship with Hawaii’s civilian population during the war. Topics of the Army and Navy photographs include, but are not limited to: military training, personnel, facilities; leisure and recreation activities; civilian defense efforts; air raid drills; defense workers; women’s participation in wartime activities; Japanese American soldiers; military and civilian parades, ceremonies, and memorials; returning American prisoners of war; and the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Washington State Library – Washington Rural Heritage
Washington Rural Heritage is a collection of historic materials documenting the early culture, industry, and community life of Washington State. The collection is an ongoing project of small, rural libraries and partnering cultural institutions, guided by an initiative of the Washington State Library (WSL). Washington Rural Heritage collections are made up of items of historical and cultural significance. These include: old photographs, historical texts, memorabilia & ephemera, scrapbooks, maps, artwork, objects & artifacts, etc. Video and audio files(e.g., oral histories, lectures, interviews) are also part of the online collection. Many of these collections include unique historical resources not previously available in digital format.
Calisphere – A World of Digital Resources
Calisphere is a free website that offers educators, students, and the public access to more than 200,000 primary sources such as photographs, documents, newspapers, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, and other cultural artifacts. These materials reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history. The content in Calisphere is drawn from the digital content in the Online Archive of California (OAC). These two websites exist because they serve two very different user needs. For research-oriented users who want to go beyond what is available online and locate the actual, physical item, the OAC is the best starting point. For users whose primary interest is to view digitized images and documents, Calisphere is a place to explore online content.
Online Archive of California
The Online Archive of California (OAC) provides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 150 contributing institutions including libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses. As well as the finding aids, the OAC contains more than 170,000 digital images and documents.
Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Portraits (Library of Congress)
Close to 700 ambrotype and tintype photographs highlight both Union and Confederate soldiers during the American Civil War. The Liljenquist Family sought out high quality images to represent the impact of the war, especially the young enlisted men. The photographs often show hats, firearms, canteens, musical instruments, painted backdrops, and other details that enhance the research value of the collection Among the rarest images are African Americans in uniform, sailors, a Lincoln campaign button, and portraits of soldiers with their wives and children. A few personal stories survived in notes pinned to the photo cases, but most of the people and photographers are unidentified. Tom Liljenquist donated the entire collection to the Library in 2010.
DCRA Office of the Surveyor Map Collection – a set on Flickr [in progress]
DCRA’s Office of the Surveyor have started uploading images of their historical maps of the District of Columbia to Flickr. They will be uploading a few images a week and hope to put all their archives online at some point in 2011.
Montana Memory Project
The “Montana Memory Project” is a collection of digital collections and items relating to Montana’s cultural heritage. In part, these collections and items will document the Montana experience. Access is free and open through the Internet. Many of these items are digitized copies of historic material, some items are contemporary. Many Montana libraries, museums, archives, and cultural institutions have added and are in the process of adding materials to this collection. Over time, contents may include digital newspapers, maps, copies of photographs, rare books, historic documents, diaries, oral histories, audio and video clips, paintings, illustrations, art, etc.

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HerStory Scrapbook
The HerStory Scrapbook focuses on the final four years of the women’s suffrage campaign, as reported by The New York Times. From 1917 – 1920, The Times published over 3,000 articles, letters, and editorials about the women who were fighting for, and against, suffrage. The HerStory Scrapbook includes more than 900 of the most interesting pieces, as if someone had saved the original articles from The Times in a scrapbook.
Watergate Exhibit Background
Various extracts of materials (audio and print) related to Watergate, collated and put online by the Nixon Library.
Florida Digital Military Newspaper Library
The Digital Military Newspaper Library is a pilot project to house, organize and preserve contemporary and historic military newspapers and periodicals. These newspapers represent Naval and Air Force bases from many geographical regions around the state of Florida and will include Kennedy Space Center, a submarine base at King’s Bay Georgia, the Panama Canal Zone, and two newspapers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Digital Military Newspaper Library’s future goal is to present the military perspective by offering full geographical representation of historic through current issues of US military newspapers from Florida and the Caribbean.
US National Archives on YouTube
The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
The Valley Project details life in two American communities, one Northern and one Southern, from the time of John Brown’s raid through the era of Reconstruction. The archive contains thousands of original letters and diaries, newspapers and speeches, census and church records, from Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
U S Civil War Diaries
A collection of eight digitised versions of diaries covering the US Civil War
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates
A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation brings together online the records and acts of Congress from the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention through the 43rd Congress, including the first three volumes of the Congressional Record, 1873-75.
Ulysses S. Grant Collection at Bartleby.com
Digitised versions of Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, and first & second Inaugural addresses.
The Papers of Jefferson Davis
The Papers of Jefferson Davis, a documentary editing project based at Rice University in Houston, Texas, is publishing a multi-volume edition of his letters and speeches, several of which can be found on this web site. The site also provides extensive information on Davis and his family and numerous images.
Historical Documents of the United States
Electronic versions of : * Declaration of Independence * U.S. Constitution * The Bill of Rights * The Federalist Papers * Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789 * Guide to American Historical Documents Online * Charters of Freedom from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
The Editorials on Secession Project
When completed, this site will provide access to over 2,000 newspaper editorials detailing the shifting tides of emotion and opinion in the 16 months leading to Southern secession and the American Civil War.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes fourteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
WWW guide to American Civil War & Reconstruction September 2006
The American Civil War Homepage
Links to many resources about the Civil War
Foreign Relations of the United States
This digital facsimile of Foreign Relations of the United States is a project of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Chicago Libraries. This is an incomplete run from 1861-1960 with missing volumes being added as they can be acquired and processed.
Hard Hat Riots: an online history project
The site has four sections, each one a different way of entering the story of the hard hat riots. If you click on “Newspapers” or “Photos,” you will then be able to explore news stories or photographs from the time period. “Places” allows you to go to one of three sites of conflict on May 8: Wall Street, City Hall, or Pace College. “Hindsight” contains commentary by writers looking back on the events of 1970.

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Civil War resources available free on footnote.com for June

Footnote.com has opened up all their content relating to the Civil War for free access throughout June.  From their website:

Footnote.com has worked with the US National Archives to bring millions of original records to the Internet for the first time. Civil War records that feature everything from personal accounts to historic writings that would shape a nation. Explore vivid details of Civil War battles through maps and photos. Get a personal picture of the war through Union and Confederate soldier service records, pension files, and more.

Go to http://go.footnote.com/civilwar_records/ to search and browse the collection of records, photos, maps, and documents.

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Lincoln Archive [Subscription required for full access]
The Lincoln Archives Digital Project started in 2002 with a simple idea for a vast undertaking: to digitize all federal records that exist from the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Over 6,000 documents are currently online and over half a million documents are scanned and in the process of being placed online. The project is the first undertaking of its kind to digitize the entire holdings of the administration of any single U.S. President. Also, we are digitizing newspaper accounts, correspondence, photographs, and other documents of the period. To see all the documents, you need a subscription (currently $15 per month or $150 per year), but all users of the website—even those without a subscription—have free access to entry descriptions, the index of documents at the “box” level, a timeline of President Lincoln’s life, Civil War photographs, and so much more.
Connecticut State Library Digital Collections
The Connecticut State Library Digital Collections feature items from the Connecticut State Library, State Archives, and the Musuem of Connecticut History. These include modern and historical records from the three branches of state government documenting the evolution of state public policy and its implementation, the rights and claims of citizens, and the history of the state and its people. Other collections include aerial surveys of the state since 1934, and the Works Progress Administration Census of Old Buildings from the 1930s. (Text from ALA Digital Library of the Week)
The Digitial Ford Presidential Library
Digitized documents and audiovisual materials from the collection at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. They are organized into the following categories: * Presidency – General * Presidency – Foreign Affairs and National Security * Presidency – Domestic Affairs and Politics * Gerald and Betty Ford’s Early Lives * Congressional Years * Vice Presidency * Post-White House Years Includes speeches, the daily diary, photographs, minutes of meetings, campaign materials, transcripts of phone conversations.

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NYPL Digital Gallery
The Digital Gallery provides free and open access to over 700,000 images digitized from The New York Public Library’s vast collections.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale. The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries. The CRDL provides educator resources and contextual materials, including Freedom on Film, relating instructive stories and discussion questions from the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia, delivering engaging online articles and multimedia.
Digital Library of Georgia
The Digital Library of Georgia is a gateway to Georgia’s history and culture found in digitized books, manuscripts, photographs, government documents, newspapers, maps, audio, video, and other resources. The Digital Library of Georgia connects users to a million digital objects in 110 collections from 60 institutions and 100 government agencies. You can browse by topic, time period, county, media type, institution or collection.
LOUISiana Digital Library
The LOUISiana Digital Library (LDL) is an online library of Louisiana institutions that provide over 144,000 digital materials. Its purpose is to make unique historical treasures from the Louisiana institution’s archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories in the state electronically accessible to Louisiana residents and to students, researchers, and the general public in other states and countries. The LOUISiana Digital Library contains photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, oral histories, and more that document history and culture.
Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1719-1820
In 1984, a professor at Rutgers University stumbled upon a trove of historic data in a courthouse in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. Over the next 15 years, Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a noted New Orleans writer and historian, painstakingly uncovered the background of 100,000 slaves who were brought to Louisiana in the 18th and 19th centuries making fortunes for their owners. Poring through documents from all over Louisiana, as well as archives in France, Spain and Texas, Dr. Hall designed and created a database into which she recorded and calculated the information she obtained from these documents about African slave names, genders, ages, occupations, illnesses, family relationships, ethnicity, places of origin, prices paid by slave owners, and slaves’ testimony and emancipations. This database was released on CD-ROM in 2000, and is now fully searchable on the web. 

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The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2008
The Living Room Candidate contains more than 300 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952.
Avalon Project – Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy
A collection of documents relating to Law, History and Diplomacy from Ancient times to the present day. Not US-specific though much US material included. The collection can be browsed by period or subject.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, is a web-based collection of selected historical materials from Harvard’s libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression. Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, includes approximately 1,800 books and pamphlets as well as 9,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages from manuscript and archival collections.
JARDA – Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives
JARDA contains thousands of Japanese American internment primary source materials: * Personal diaries, letters, photographs, and drawings * US War Relocation Authority materials, including camp newsletters, final reports, photographs, and other documents relating to the day-to-day administration of the camps * Personal histories documenting the lives of the people who lived in the camps as well as the administrators who created and worked in the camps
The Oyez Project | U.S. Supreme Court Oral Argument Recordings, Case Abstracts and More
The Oyez Project is a multimedia archive devoted to the Supreme Court of the United States and its work. It aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955. The Project also provides authoritative information on all justices and offers a virtual reality ‘tour’ of portions of the Supreme Court building, including the chambers of some of the justices.
American Left Ephemera Collection
The material on this Web site represents a small sample of ephemera that documents the three largest and most influential left-wing organizations in the United States in the twentieth century: Socialist Party of America (SPUSA), Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Digitized items include flyers, leaflets, pamphlets, posters, postcards, illustrations, photographs, pins, ribbons, and miscellaneous objects. It comprises a much larger collection of material accumulated by Richard J. Oestreicher, Associate Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh and recently donated to the University’s Archives Service Center. The larger collection includes a much broader range of organizations and political tendencies. Texts and images can be both browsed and searched.
Oral Histories of the Social Security Administration
The SSA started a project in 1995 to collect oral histories and make available older histories rom a wide spectrum of individuals who have participated in the making of the history of the organisation over the years. The emphasis is on the administrative history of the Social Security program and the institutional history of SSA. The project is no longer current, but the transcripts (8 from the 1960s and 70s, 22 from the late 90s) are still available, along with links to other Socia Security-related oral history projects from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Columbia University.
National Park Service e-library
Almost 4000 books, reports, articles and oral histories covering all aspects of the National Park Service since its inception in 1916.
The Reagan Files
Scans of declassified documents from the Reagan Library, some obtained via FOIA requests, some released following declassification by President Obama. Includes transcripts of summits with Gorbachev, letters to Soviet leaders, transcripts of NSC/NSPG meetings and Iran-Contra files.
The published writings of Herbert Hoover (Herbert Hoover Library)
Ebook versions of Hoover’s memoirs (3 volumes, Macmillan, 1951) and the Hoover volumes of the Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States (GPO, 1974-1977).

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Documenting the American South: Oral Histories of the American South
Oral Histories of the American South” is a three-year project to select, digitize and make available 500 oral history interviews gathered by the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP). These 500 are being selected from a collection of over 4,000 interviews, housed at the Southern Historical Collection. The histories cover six topical areas: Charlotte, Civil Rights, Environmental Transformations, Piedmont Industrialization, Southern Politics, and Southern Women.
Oral History Project of the Senate Historical Office
Since 1976 the Senate Historical Office has interviewed Senate officers, parliamentarians, clerks, police officers, chiefs of staff, reporters, photographers, Senate pages, and senators. These interviews cover the breadth of the 20th century and now the 21st century, and include a diverse group of personalities who witnessed events first-hand.
The Danville Civil Rights Project
This online exhibit examines the responses of ten Danville, VA residents to the civil rights struggle that occurred in their hometown.
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin is a collaborative undertaking by a team of scholars at Yale University to collect, edit, and publish the writings and papers of one of America’s most remarkable founding fathers and indeed one of the most extraordinary people this nation has ever produced. His ever-curious and inventive mind explored nearly every aspect of his world, both pragmatic and theoretical, and he corresponded with an astonishing range of men and women of all classes and nearly all professions in America, Great Britain, and Europe. In a life spanning from 1706 to 1790, his collected papers present a panoramic view of the eighteenth century. 

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