Primary Sources: 20th Century

As a module within the History Commons Platform, Accessible Archives includes: African American Newspapers, African American Newspapers in the South, American County Histories, American Inventor, Anatomy of Protest in America, Colonial Newspapers, Frank Leslie’s Weekly, Godey’s Lady’s Book, and more.

This is "an online collection of more than 450 historic films by and about Native peoples of the Americas, compiled and digitized by historian J. Fred MacDonald over many years. These films range in date from 1925-2010."

These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning. They include written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.

Several hundred early motion pictures are viewable in the Library of Congress American Memory collections. (Description courtesy of UVA Libraries)

Includes LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Part I -II and Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century. "Illuminates the experiences not just of the LGBTQ community as a whole, but of individuals of different races, ethnicities, ages, religions, political orientations, and geographical locations that constitute this community.” Includes historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals, publications by and for lesbians and gays, and extensive coverage of governmental responses to the AIDS crisis. Contains personal correspondence and interviews with numerous LGBTQ individuals, among others and 5,000 monographs that provide context to the twentieth-century materials covered in Parts I and II. Sources include the British Library’s Private Case Collection, Special Subject Units from Sex Research: Early Literature from Statistics to Erotica, a collection from the Alfred C. Kinsey Institute for Sex Research dating from 1700 to 1860, and a collection of rare and unique books from the New York Academy of Medicine.

"The Black Freedom Struggle website will include more than 2,000 documents curated around six crucial phases of the U.S. Black freedom struggle:

Resistance to slavery by enslaved persons and the abolitionist movement of the 19th century
The end of slavery during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era
The fight against Jim Crow segregation
The New Deal and World War II
The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement from 1946-1975
…and the contemporary Black experience since 1976."

America's leading 19th century illustrated newspaper from 1857 to 1912, full text.

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.

"... an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century."

Full text journals, many back to the original issue. Provides access to journals in the arts & sciences, business, ecology & botany, and languages & literature. JSTOR's coverage typically begins 3 -5 years after the current year.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (1881 - 2011)"... provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time."

The ProQuest Historical New York Times (1851 - 2013) w/ Index (1851-1993) historical newspaper collection provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.

The Newspapers.com -Southeast Collection archive offers historical coverage to full page newspaper images with searchable full-text for millions of pages of historical newspapers (1766 -2023) in the southeastern region of the United States.

1890-1982 provides indexing of over three million articles from more than 550 leading magazines, including full coverage of the original print volumes of Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature.

1,530 plays by 223 playwrights, with information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and ephemera related to the plays.

The ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post (1877 - 2004) provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.

Global in scope, the archive presents materials covering the social, political, and professional aspects of women's lives and offers a look at the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society. A wide range of primary sources provide a close look at some of the pioneers of women's history, a deep dive into the issues that have affected women, and the many contributions they have made to society.

"... full-text facsimile of more than 200 years of The Times [London], one of the most highly regarded resources for eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century news coverage."