Primary Sources: Depression & World War II, 1929-1945

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 collection of primary sources comes from George Washington University's National Security Archive. Among the items you'll find here are documents providing background on the atomic project and insight into how targets were selected.

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.

From the website: "The Bracero History Archive collects and makes available the oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964.

The Densho Digital Archive contains more than 1,400 hours of interviews, visual histories of Japanese Americans and others affected by the World War II incarceration. Also included are over 12,000 historical images documenting Japanese American history.

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) was a life-long cartoonist: in high school in Springfield, Massachusetts; in college at Dartmouth (Class of 1925); as an adman in New York City before World War II; in his many children's books, beginning with To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street (1937). Because of the fame of his children's books (and because we often misunderstand these books) and because his political cartoons have remained largely unknown, we do not think of Dr. Seuss as a political cartoonist. But for two years, 1941-1943, he was the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM (1940-1948), and for that journal he drew over 400 editorial cartoons.

From the Cowles Library Collection at Drake University, this site provides access to images of Darling, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner who worked as a cartoonist for most of the first half of the 20th Century.

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 contains a host of primary source materials including; selections of goldman's writings, digitized copies of documents such as telegrams and handbills, photographs of Goldman and her contemporaries.

This collection, from the Library of Congress, features the work of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Herb Lock. Lock's work spans more than six decades, from the stock market crash in 1929 through the new millennium beginning in the year 2000.

This digital collection from Southern Methodist University includes informational pamphlets, government reports, propaganda materials and other items distributed by the Government Printing Office during World War II.

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.

This site provides access to a digitized version of the 7 volume "Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties". Those volumes cover the period between 1778 through 1971. This site, produced by Oklahoma State University, is searchable.

This digital collection was compiled by the Naval History and Heritage Command. The site provides access to images and other material from the U.S. Department of the Navy's Naval Historical Center related to Japan's surrender to the Allies in World War II.

Through its collection of oral histories, photographs, letters and other memorabilia, this site helps documents the experience of Jewish American Women from the 1940s through the present.

The mission of Labor Arts is to "… to present powerful images that help us understand the past and present lives of working people." In this virtual museum you'll find digitized copies of photographs, posters, buttons, banners, flyers, paintings and sculpture.

This project, part of the duke University Libraries Digital collections, contains over 600 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States.

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

From the NARA website: "The National Archives was established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt, but its major holdings date back to 1775. They capture the sweep of the past: slave ship manifests and the Emancipation Proclamation..."

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

As part of the Open Collections Program, the Harvard Law School Library has approximately one million pages of documents relating to the trial of military and political leaders of Nazi Germany before the International Military Tribunal (IMT.)

Named for American Cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper, the items in this collection span decades of American history, from 1875-1932.

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.

The collection includes digitized articles and advertising images of Protestant children and families in the U.S., within Protestant-supported or targeted magazines held in the Duke University Divinity School Library.

This Digital Collection, compiled by the National Archives and Records Administration, includes World War II posters that convey American strength and appeal to patriotism as well as those that depict frightening images of the war.

From the website: "Between 1940 and 1973, six American presidents from both political parties secretly recorded just under 5,000 hours of their meetings and telephone conversations. Through a combination of historical research and annotated transcripts the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program aims to make these remarkable historical sources more accessible to scholars, teachers, students, and the public."

Between 1940 and 1973, six American presidents from both political parties—Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon—secretly recorded on tape just under 5,000 hours of their meetings and telephone conversations. The Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Program from University of Virginia's Miller Center is a unique effort aimed at making these remarkable historical sources accessible.

From Duke University Libraries Digital Collections, The World War II Ration Coupon collection consists of ration coupons, stickers and certificates for tires, bicycles, typewriters, sugar, shoes, fuel oil, gasoline, and food which were issued by the Office of Price Administration from 1942-1945.

Clifford K. Berryman was a D.C. cartoonist who drew for the Washington Post and the Evening Star during his career, which spanned more than a half-century. This collection, from The National Archives, depicts all aspects of the campaign process.

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.

This collection, from the University of Washington's Digital Collections, includes a selection of World War I and World War II posters. Subjects addressed in these placards include war bonds and national security.

Women Working, 1800 - 1930 focuses on women's role in the United States economy and provides access to digitized historical, manuscript, and image resources selected from Harvard University's library and museum collections. The collection features approximately 500,000 digitized pages and images including: 7,500 pages of manuscripts, 3,500 books and pamphlets, 1,200 photographs. This site is part of Harvard University Library’s Open Collections Program.