LibGuides: UGS 302: Social Movement Organization / Wright: How to find primary sources

What are they, when do I use them?

Primary sources are produced by participants or direct observers of an event or time period. These sources may be recorded during the event or later on, by a participant reflecting upon the event.

Why would I use them?

Primary sources offer a first-hand or eyewitness account of a situation that is unfiltered by interpretation.

What are some examples?

Newspapers
Speeches
Government documents
Legal documents
Public opinion polls
Personal materials, including letters, diaries, interviews, memoirs, autobiographies and oral histories
Artifacts, including photos, paintings, drawings, etc.

How should I use them in my research?

To analyze primary sources, ask yourself these questions:

Who is the creator and what was their relationship to the event or issue?
Why did the creator produce this source?
Was the source for personal use? For a large audience?
Was the source intended to be public (newspaper) or private (correspondence)?
How neutral was the creator? What biases or interests might have influenced how the source was created?
Can the source be substantiated by other primary sources? Can you confirm what the creator is saying?

Secondary sources are interpretations and evaluations of primary sources. They are analyses of primary sources written by scholars and experts in a field after the time period or event has occurred.

Why would I use them?

Secondary sources have the benefit of hindsight. The author is able to contextualize the primary source in a way that takes into account other viewpoints and events that happened at the same time or afterwards.

Where are some examples?

Biographies
Reviews and criticism
Histories, such as in books or documentaries

How should I use them in my research?

Secondary sources are useful when you need an expert’s or scholar’s interpretation of a topic. This individual has spent her career researching primary documents and interpreting, analyzing and contextualizing them.

Promising leads

African American Communities (AAC) This link opens in a new window
Presents multiple aspects of the African American community through personal diaries and scrapbooks, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories.
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part One This link opens in a new window
The Organizational Records and Personal Papers bring a new perspective to the Black Freedom Struggle via the records of major civil rights organizations and personal papers of leaders and observers of the 20th century Black freedom struggle. The three major civil rights organizations are the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.

Through records of Claude A. Barnett's Associated Negro Press, this module also branches out to cover other aspects of African American life in the 20th century, like religion, sports, education, fraternal organizations, and even the field of entertainment.
Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Part Two This link opens in a new window
This Black Freedom module is highlighted by the records of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Africa-related papers of Claude Barnett, and the Robert F. Williams Papers. Rounding out this module are the papers of Chicago Congressman Arthur W. Mitchell, the Chicago chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, and records pertaining to the Mississippi Freedom Summer.
HistoryMakers This link opens in a new window
This resource’s unique content is primarily composed of video oral histories recording the African American experience in the first-person. Testimonies captured in The HistoryMakers Collection interviews are conducted in homes and offices across the United States and abroad. The interviews reveal the broad scope of narratives of African American men and women who have made significant contributions to American life, history, and culture during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
LGBT Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
LGBT Thought and Culture is an online primary source database hosting the key works and archival documentation of LGBT political and social movements throughout the 20th century and into the present day. The collection contains seminal texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera.
The resource provides a look into LGBT life from the late 19th to the early 21st centuries, covering topics such as bars and saloons, gay communities, clubs and social organizations, gay activism and activists, gay rights, AIDS, films, politics, books, medical treatments and procedures, gender identity, discrimination, and more.
Includes material from the Kinsey Institute Archive and Library, the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the Jeanne Cordova Papers, the Magnus Hirschfeld Collection, and more.
Independent Voices This link opens in a new window
Independent Voices is 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.
Women and Social Movements (U.S.) This link opens in a new window
Updated quarterly. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000. A resource for the teaching the history of women in the United States. Consists of 74 editorial projects with more than 2200 primary documents intended for use in high school and college history classrooms. Also includes a major collection of links to related websites and a search engine that permits users to do full text searching of all the primary documents mounted on the site.
North American Indian Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
A collection of biographical material of American Indians and Canadian First Peoples in their own words and through the words of others. Includes biographies, autobiographies, personal narratives, speeches, diaries, letters, oral histories, reference works, manuscripts, photographs and audio files.Sources include rare books and biographies from more than 100 Indian publications, such as The Arrow, the Cherokee Phoenix, and the Chickasaw Intelligencer. The collection includes 2,000 oral histories presented in audio and transcript form and at least 20,000 photographs from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Edward Curtis, and many rare collections.
Indigenous Newspapers in North America This link opens in a new window
North American Indigenous journalism spanning two centuries.. Features periodicals produced in the United States and Canada, including Alaska, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Nevada and Oklahoma, from 1828 to 2016.
Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 2 This link opens in a new window
Presents thematic content focusing on the evolution of Hispanic civil rights, religious thought, and the growing presence of women writers from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Rare and relevant books and newspapers – including rare anarchist newspapers – are presented in their original form. Extensive manuscript collections of both organizations and individuals are included for viewing, and are indexed for ease of search and maximum discovery. This collection offers a unique approach by focusing exclusively on the Latino-Hispanic history of the United States.

Newspapers (general alt press)

Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Updated monthly. Provides full-text coverage of newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press in America (some international coverage). Includes more than 400,000 full-text articles from 200 publications.
Alt-Press Watch This link opens in a new window
Updated monthly. Provides full-text coverage of newspapers, magazines and journals of the alternative and independent press in America. Includes a broad range of critical issues confronting contemporary society, such as ecology and the environment, grassroots organizing, labor, indigenous peoples, and public policy.