Primary Sources - History

The 1998 collaboration between Brown University's Scholarly Technology Group and members of the sophomore class at South Kingstown High School (SKHS) that culminated in this Web site shows both the depth and the breadth of learning that is possible when experts align with educators to energize students and draw out community members.

This site provides access to PDF images of original typewritten transcripts of hundreds of invaluable first-person accounts of Native peoples representing all tribes in Oklahoma. Beginning in 1966, tobacco heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke funded seven American Indian oral history projects, including one based at the University of Oklahoma.

ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) revolutionized gay politics, giving new and forceful meaning to the slogan "out of the closets and into the streets." In celebration of all that ACT-UP accomplished (and that still remains to be done), filmmaker Jim Hubbard and novelist and essayist Sarah Schulman have created a Web site of oral histories of individuals who participated in this significant political movement.

These interviews touch on the Great Depression, slavery, political views, the role of the federal government, local folklore, and a myriad of other topics. First-time visitors to this Library of Congress website should read over the "Voices from the Thirties: An Introduction to the WPA Life Histories Collection" section. Visitors can search the interviews by keyword or state, and visitors may wish to start by reading the interview of Louis Larsen, a farmer, social activist and singer in Nebraska

Since 1994, faculty and students at Rutgers Univ. have collected the stories of those who served in uniform or in some home front capacity during WW II. Today containing over 250 oral history interviews,

A key component of diplomatic history research is the writings of individual foreign service officers (FSOs), consulate officials, and diplomats.This recent, noteworthy collection of foreign affairs oral histories is hosted by the Library of Congress in its seminal American Memory Collection. It contains an electronic collection of transcribed interviews of foreign service officers who served in the diplomatic corps in the 1920s-40s, but the bulk of the collection features post-WW II FSOs.