Primary Sources: Post-War Era, 1946-1959

This collection, one of many in the the Duke University Libraries' Digital Collections, features Thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, dated 1950s - 1980s.

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.

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.

The Clifford H. Baldowski Collection at the Richard B. Russell Library

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 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.

From the website: "The Project supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War, and seeks to accelerate the process of integrating new sources, materials and perspectives from the former "Communist bloc" with the historiography of the Cold War which has been written over the past few decades largely by Western scholars reliant on Western archival sources."

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 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 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.

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.

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.

This site provides access to a variety of primary source material about Malcolm X including: video interviews with those who knew Malcolm X, digitized copies of speeches delivered by Malcolm X, and government documents.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University provides links to the text of King's sermon's and speeches, biographical essays, encyclopedia entries and audio and audio and video clips of the Civil Rights leader.

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

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.

The website of NARA, the Archives of the United States Government. This website makes available many audio, video, and text items related to significant events in United States history. Collections are searchable, and you can also access major documents through the DocsTeach tool.

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

. Interviews with more than 150 people totaling 335 hours, related transcripts, documents and photographs are housed in UNLV Lied Library's Department of Special Collections. Searchable transcripts, selected audio and video clips, scanned photographs and images are available on this website.

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.

This collection includes a variety of letters, speeches, National Security Council reports and photographs.

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."

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."

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.