Primary Sources: Late 20th Century, 1980-1999

Historical collections for the National Digital Library, from the Library of Congress. Provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

This collection, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, contains more than 85,000 documents pertaining to the presidency. The items span all eras of American history and range from the public papers of George Washington to the victory speech of Barack Obama.

This site provides visitors with access to an online collection of digital texts and images from the American Radicalism collection at Michigan State University. Among the many subject areas included are the Hollywood Ten, Black Panthers, Birth Control, I.W.W., Wounded Knee and Students for a Democratic Society.

This site offers a database of and index to more than 5000 speeches in text, audio and video formats. The site also contains links to the Top 100 speeches of the 20th century.

The Avalon Project provides access to digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government. Its coverage spand from 4000bce to the 21st century.

From the website: "This online exhibition of letters and audio, created by the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Legacy Project, features correspondence from over 200 years of American conflicts, ranging from the Revolution to the war in Iraq.

Currently the Digital Library collection of the Carter presidential library includes papers from the Office of the Chief of Staff and the Office of Staff Secretary during the Carter Administration. The collection has been selected in whole or in part and digitized for web access.

The Living Room Candidate contains more than 300 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952.

This collection, part of the Library of Congress's Veterans History Project presents the stories of gau service men and women who served their country " while balancing the need to keep their private lives private."

This collection from the Library of Congress includes man interviews that involve post-World War II diplomacy, from the late 1940s to the present day, but the collection also includes accounts of Americans involved in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2003

This collection, from the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, features images, texts and maps that illustrate the African-American migration experience.

The Life photo archive, hosted by Google's Image Search, features millions of photographs from the magazine's archives. You can search the database keyword or by category. Those categories include: time period, people, places, events, sports and culture.

The Prelinger Archvies, housed at The Internet Archive, represents a collection of tens of thousands of advertising,educational, industrial and amateur films.

The National Archives was established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt,. Its holdings date back to 1775.

This digital public law library, a project of The Native American Rights Fund, is devoted to Federal native American and tribal law.

This collection from the National Archives tells the story of the 20th century United States in pictures. Among the images you'll find here are pictures of an Easter Parade on New York's 5th Avenue in 1900 and one of President Bill Clinton playing a saxophone.

From the website: The Presidential Oral History Program is systematically and comprehensively debriefing the principal figures in the administrations of Presidents Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Clinton, with plans to do the same for future presidents.

This site contains a database of journalists imprisoned while covering the story or killed in the line of work since 1992. The search interface allows you to explore incidents by year and geographic area.

The National Archives and Records administration maintains a site devoted to Historical Election Results. Included on this page are the results of the electoral college votes dating back to 1789.

This site, from the U.S. Library of Congress, contains photographs, correspondence and personal narratives from participants in World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

From the website: “The Archives of Women's Political Communication consists of a website developed to guide scholars to present and past speeches of women political leaders.”