WEBSITES FOR RESEARCH IN US HISTORY 1919-1945
(Updated Fall 2005)

(You can search any of these sites for your topic and are likely to come up with something relevant, especially the American Memory page)

Library of Congress online documents, lotsa oral histories and great stuff on just about every subject

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html

National Archives Constitutional Community Page

teaching info for US history but has good docs and brief biblios
http://www.archives.gov/education/constitution-community.html

Bibliographic introduction to the decade. NOT for use for research papers but a good place to start to get ideas for topics and some good links

http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decades.html

Women and Social Movements 1920-1945

Excellent website at SUNY-Binghamton with lots of primary documents. Topics include Pacifism vs. Patriotism in Women's Organizations in the 1920s; Equal Rights Debate in the 1920s; The Red Scare and Women's Peace Activism, 1920s; Puerto Rican Women Garment Workers and the New Deal, 1933; Women and Civil Liberties in the San Antonio Pecan Workers Strike, 1938; and The Iowa League of Women Voters and the ERA, 1943-1955.  You need to scroll down and look at the titles to find the right time period.
http://womhist.binghamton.edu/projectmap.htm

This site views the 1930s through the lenses of its films, radio programs, literature, journalism, museums, exhibitions, architecture, art, and other forms of cultural expression

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s/home_1.html

The New Deal Network was founded by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (FERI), in collaboration with the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Marist College, and IBM . Much of the information on this site is geared to K-12 schools but the document library is a database of photographs, political cartoons, and texts (speeches, letters, and other historic documents from the New Deal period) which are good primary sources. Currently there are over 20,000 items in this database

http://newdeal.feri.org/texts/index.htm

Hosted by Southern Methodist University, a large assortment of digitally reproduced posters and U.S. government documents. Includes search engine and can be browsed by title.

http://worldwar2.smu.edu/

http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/censusbin/census/cen.pl?year=920

Searchable 1930 Census Data

http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/censusbin/census/cen.pl?year=930

The 1919 Chicago White Sox was the best team in baseball, yet they were paid a fraction of what many players on other teams received. The bitterness Sox players felt for their owner led eight members of the team to enter into a conspiracy that would forever change the game of baseball and be remembered as the greatest scandal in the history of professional sports. They would agree to throw the World Series.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/blacksox/blacksox.html

Sacco and Vanzetti: for a generation of Americans, the names of the two Italian anarchists are forever linked. Questions surrounding their 1921 trial for the murders of a paymaster and his guard bitterly divided a nation. As the two convicted men and their supporters struggled on through appellate courts and clemency petitions to avoid the electric chair, public interest in their case continued to grow.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/SaccoV/SaccoV.htm

The crime that captured national attention in 1924 began as a fantasy in the mind of eighteen-year old Richard Loeb, the son of a retired Sears Roebuck vice president. Loeb was obsessed with crime. Nathan Leopold, was interested in ornithology, philosophy, and especially, Richard Loeb. For Loeb, crime became a sort of game; he wanted to commit the perfect crime just to prove that it could be done. The two teenagers spent hours discussing and refining a plan that included kidnapping the child of a wealthy parents, demanding a ransom, and collecting the ransom after it was thrown off a moving train as it passed a designated point. Neither Loeb nor Leopold relished the idea of murdering their kidnap victim, but they thought it critical to minimizing their likelihood of being identified as the kidnappers.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/leoploeb/leopold.htm

The famous case that was showdown beteween fundamentalist creationists and supporters of evolution theory. Involves Clarence Darrow at his peak, William Jennings Bryan's last roar, and inspired the play Inherit the Wind (later a movie with Spencer Tracey)

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm

In September 1925, black physician Dr. Ossian Sweet moved his family into an all white neighborhood in Detroit. The next night his family home was surrounded by a large and angry mob throwing rocks and threatening violence. With the Sweets in fear for their lives, someone in the house shot a gun into the crowd to scare them away, in the process killing one man and wounding another. The police arrested the men and put them on trial. Clarence Darrow (who else?!) defended them.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/sweet/sweet.html

Tulsa panel seeks truth from 1921 race riot

CNN article which includes audio accounts of eyewitnesses.

http://www.cnn.com/US/9908/03/tulsa.riots.probe/index.html

Reports and accounts from the Oklahoma Historical Society

http://www.ok-history.mus.ok.us/trrc/freport.htm

African-American Resource Center Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
Tulsa City Library site

http://www.tulsalibrary.org/aarc/riot/riot.htm

http://www.tulsareparations.org/Vignettes.htm

http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/mgpp/

United Negro Improvement Association Archives

Documents from the official UNIA webpage

http://www.unia-acl.org/archive/archives.htm

The March 1925 edition of Survey Graphic magazine helped bring the work of the writers of the Harlem Renaissance to national attention.

http://etext.virginia.edu/harlem/index.html

African American Odyssey: World War I and Postwar Society (Part 2)

The American Memory collection exhibit at the Library of Congress on the Harlem Renaissance

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart7b.html

A nice collection of art, poetry, and prose from the period put together by a student at Northern Kentucky University

http://www.nku.edu/~diesmanj/harlem_intro.html

Good images and brief bios of the artists also brief representative writings of Harlem Renaissance authors

http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Dept/EN/Courses/EN370/EN3707117Garcia/

As an alternative to Harlem, this Library of Congress site uses documents and images from its collections to describe the Great Migration from the South to Chicago

http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam011.html

"One Lesson From History: Appointment of Special Counsel and the Investigation of the Teapot Dome Scandal" by Leslie E. Bennett, Intern for the Independent Counsel Statute Project. Includes narrative and analysis and links to court transcripts and commission reports.

http://www.brook.edu/gs/ic/teapotdome/teapotdome.htm

This site documents the nation's transition to a mass consumer economy and the role of government in this transition.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html

Advertisements

From Duke University special collections. Includes hygiene, cosmetics and radio advertisements from the 1920s-1945

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/browse.html#browse

A project developed at Ohio State University, it explores why the U.S. adopted prohibition; traces the growth of the brewing industry; examines the Woman’s Crusade of 1873 and 1874; analyzes the development of the Anti-Saloon League; and contains cartoons from the Prohibition party, images of old-time saloons, and arguments for and against prohibition.

http://prohibition.osu.edu/

The Westerville [Ohio] Public Library collection of documents songs etc. 1893-1933

http://www.wpl.lib.oh.us/AntiSaloon/

Special report featuring coverage from the Times archives.

http://www.nytimes.com/library/financial/index-1929-crash.html

This web site provides an extensive collection of Herbert Hoover's official papers and public statements that relate directly or indirectly to his economic policy in the Great Depression

http://www.geocities.com/mb_williams/hooverpapers/

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/dust/low.html

Voices from the Dust Bowl
A collection of materials from the Farm Security Administration migrant work camps in California. Maintained by the Library of Congress, the site includes migrant workers’ songs, correspondence, photographs, and explanatory text. It is searchable by keyword or medium.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html

Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945
A searchable collection of more than 55,000 photographs that document the impact of the Depression and World War II on rural life.

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html

http://www.oac.cdlib.org:80/dynaweb/ead/omca/

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/128_migm.html

http://www.freedomvoices.org/pholist.htm

http://ocean.st.usm.edu/~wsimkins/primary.html

http://www.mhrcc.org/fdr/fdr.html

Hackett was FDR's personal lawyer so these documents can shed light on FDR the man vs FDR the president.

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/hacfront.html

Online collection of documents from the Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights Project

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/

An archive of editorial cartoons dealing with Franklin Roosevelt and his administration.

http://www.nisk.k12.ny.us/fdr/

Thirteen addresses by Franklin Roosevelt on Social Security.

http://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstmts.html

This site, which contains an overview of the history of the Social Security system, also includes
Francis Townsend’s proposal for old age pensions and writings by Roosevelt’s critics Father Charles Coughlin and Huey Long

http://www.ssa.gov/history/history.html

An online exhibition that uses of texts and images from the National Archives to examine New Deal era federal art programs, the art works that were created, and the controversies they provoked.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/new_deal_for_the_arts/index.html

San Francisco and the General Strike of 1934

From the September 1934 edition of Survey Graphic Magazine.

http://newdeal.feri.org/survey/34405.htm

Site maintained by ILWU #19 workers rather than scholars, but good info and quotes primary sources. Also has other Depression Era labor info

http://www.ilwu19.com/history/contents.htm

Photos of 1934 International Longshoremen's Association and General Strike

http://dynaweb.oac.cdlib.org/dynaweb/ead/calher/strike/@Generic__BookView%3bcs=default%3bts=default

From the Museum of the City of San Franciso

http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist/thursday.html

Catholic Worker 1941 account of strikes

http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/daytext.cfm?TextID=147&SearchTerm=memorial%20day%20massacre

INFAMOUS TRIALS

Scottsboro Boys Trial 1931-37

No crime in American history-- let alone a crime that never occurred-- produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931. Letters and newspaper articles relating to the trial as well as contemporary accounts of the 1931-37 trials and appeals. Includes transcript excerpts and court decisions in the case.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/FTrials/scottsboro/scottsb.htm

The trial featured America's greatest hero, a good mystery involving ransom notes and voices in dark cemeteries, a crime that is every parent's worst nightmare, and a German-born defendant who fought against U. S. forces in World War I

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Hauptmann/Hauptmann.htm

Franklin Roosevelt's Safe Files

dating from 1933-1945, consist of formerly National Security Classified materials, mainly from the World War II period. The Safe Files include correspondence, reports, and memoranda concerning: the Manhattan Project, the Atlantic Charter and the United Nations, the O.S.S., the War, Navy, Treasury and State Departments, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, China, Great Britain and France, General George Marshall, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Ambassador Averell Harriman, Admiral Ernest King and Harry Hopkins, as well as the American-British Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pacific War Council, and "Plan Dog".

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/fdrbx.html

The Vatican Files are drawn from the Diplomatic Series in the President's Secretary's File (PSF) and consist of wartime reports, memoranda, and correspondence between FDR, Pope Pius XII, Myron Taylor, Harold Tittman and others.

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/vatican1.html

The documents in these files are drawn from the Diplomatic Series in the President's Secretary's Files. They reveal much about German-American relations and the U.S. response to the dramatic events that were unfolding in Germany and Europe in the years leading to World War Two. They also contain information about the war in Europe between 1939 and 1941; intelligence reports on Hitler and other Nazi leaders; information about Nazi activities in South and Central America; as well as material on U.S.-German trade. There are no records for the years 1942-43, when there was very little if any contact between the two governments, but the files resume again in 1944 in anticipation of an Allied victory. The 1944-45 files contain a good deal of information about U.S. proposals for the treatment of Germany after the war, including the controversial Morgenthau Plan and other significant postwar material.

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/german1.html

Material concerning U.S.- British relations and the development of the Anglo-American Alliance can be found in the British Diplomatic Files, and in the Safe Files, under the Arcadia Conference, the Atlantic Charter Conference, Lord Beaverbrook, Lord Halifax, Lend Lease to Great Britain, Lord Lothian, and North Africa (preparations for the Allied invasion of North Afirca, in November 1942).

http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/anglo.html

World War II Resources

An extensive collection of primary sources including diplomatic documents, the Pearl Harbor attack hearings, documents relating to military intelligence, and Roosevelt’s speeches

http://metalab.unc.edu/pha/index.html

Interviews in which men and women describe their wartime experience.

http://fas-history.rutgers.edu/oralhistory/orlhom.htm

The Avalon Project: World War II Documents
Official documents, including treaties, military directives, policy statements, and records of wartime conferences

(San Francisco State University) Selection of American posters featuring anti-Japanese propaganda. Part of a set of lesson plans on the Japanese-American relocation camps.

http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/posters.html

(University of Illinois at Chicago) A sampling of propaganda posters produced by the Treasury Department and the Office of War Information during World War II.

http://tax.org/THP/Civilization/poster.htm

Lesson plan from the National Archives and images

http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/powers_of_persuasion/powers_of_persuasion.html

Produce for Victory: Posters on the American Home Front (1941-45)

(National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)
Annotated online exhibit of American World War II posters. Focuses on how posters were used to link the military front with the home front, calling upon every American to boost production at work and at home.

http://americanhistory.si.edu/victory/index.htm

(Department of the Navy - Naval Historical Center)
When complete, this exhibit will contain all of the works in the Navy Art Collection that relate to the recruitment of women during World War II. This includes not only finished posters, but also original artwork for the posters. Each image is annotated with title, artist, medium, and technical number.

http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/posters/wwiiwomen/wavep1.htm

Women Come to the Front
This site examines the experiences of wartime women journalists.

http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0001.html

Women at War: An Online Exhibit

(University of North Carolina — Greensborough)
Posters used in campaigns during World War I and World War II to entice women to join the war effort, both at home and overseas, in civilian agencies, as nurses and doctors, and to a lesser degree in the military.

http://library.uncg.edu/depts/archives/exhibits/Veterans/posters.html

Women in Propaganda

(Kari Boyd McBride - University of Arizona)
Selection of World War II posters from several countries using images of women. Part of an essay on the social roles of women during World War II.

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kari/rosie.htm#prop

National Archives lesson plan with documents

http://www.archives.gov/digital_classroom/lessons/japanese_relocation_wwii/teaching_activities.html

Documents from the Truman Presidential Library

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/japanese_internment/background.htm

Internment of San Francisco Japanese

Museum of the City of San Francisco, n.d. [cited 12 May 2002].
This site includes the text of articles that appeared in San Francisco News, March-April 1942.

http://www.sfmuseum.org/war/evactxt.html.

Ishigo [Estelle] Papers

Japanese American Research Project, University of California, Los Angeles.
Estelle was a Caucasian artist who married Arthur Shigeharu Ishigo in 1928. They were placed in the Pomona Assembly Center at the outbreak of World War II, and later relocated to the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp in Wyoming. In addition to correspondence and photographs, this collection includes the paintings and drawings that she completed while at Heart Mountain.

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/dynaweb/ead/ucla/mss/ishigo2/.

From the Truman Presidential Library, set up as a high schoool activity but includes lots of good documents

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/bomb.htm

A-bomb WWW-Museum
A Japanese site that contains information on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagisaki, which includes photographs and oral histories.

http://www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/index.html

Documents on the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagisaki.

http://www.dannen.com/decision/index.html

Footage of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9608/10/japan.hiroshima.film/index.html