Research Guides: HIST 4563: Old South: General Primary Sources

Books as Primary Sources?

Published memoirs, letters, diaries, and collections of source documents can serve as primary sources, depending on your topic. Beyond these "first person accounts," books published at the time of your topic can reveal a great deal about the attitudes and assumptions of the time.

Try to add terms such as "sources," "personal narratives," "memoirs," or "correspondence" to your search terms to locate published sources.

Magazines and Periodicals

Popular periodicals and magazines easily convey the atmosphere of the time in which they were published. Not only the feature articles, but also the illustrations, editorial statements, and advertisements can serve as primary sources.

Making of America
An impressive online collection of 19th century periodicals and some books
Pooles’ Index to Periodicals Literature, 1802‐1906
A subject index to articles in 19th century periodicals. Ref AI3 P7.

HarpWeek: Harper's Weekly Online This link opens in a new window
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Covers: 1857-1912. Provides electronic access to Harper's Weekly, the illustrated 19th century "Journal of Civilization". An important primary resource for examining 19th-century America on a cumulative week-to-week basis. Includes: news stories, illustrations, cartoons. editorials, biographies, literature, opinion, and advertisements.
Readers' Guide Retrospective This link opens in a new window
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Covers: 1890-1982. Indexes the most popular general-interest periodicals published in the United States.
Includes magazines and periodicals such as Time, National Geographic, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report, and are covered. Many titles are indexed back to their first issue date. An especially rich source for locating television, theater, film, and book reviews for older works.

Google Books: Magazines
A new initiative to scan 20th century periodicals. Includes titles such as the Crisis, Life, Billboard, and more. Use the Advanced Search in Google Books to limit your search to magazine articles.

Newspapers

Finding and using newspapers is a big topic. You can read the Research Guide for Newspaper Research for more in-depth information.

These resources have full text online that can be searched by keyword.

19th Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Covers: 1800-1900.A fully-searchable, facsimile archive of hundreds of U.S. papers, including the Arkansas Gazette (1819-1898), Arkansas Democrat (1846-1899), the Arkansas State Gazette (1836-1865), and the Morning Republican (Little Rock, 1867-1875).
New York Times, 1851-2019 (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window
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Provides the full archive of the New York Times, from the first date of issue. View retrieved articles as PDFs or view the entire newspaper page for context. The detailed indexes, which cover 1851-1993, allow one to search by named person, company name, place, or type of article (editorial, obituary, review, etc.)
NewspaperArchive.com This link opens in a new window
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Provides a searchable archive of Southeastern papers, included those from Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Includes Arkansas newspapers from Fayetteville, Blytheville, Benton, Camden, Harrison, Hope, and Gentry.
Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
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Covers: varies; most newspapers are 1990s-; legal materials extend back to the 19th century. Offers news, legal, and business information from both English language and international sources, including newsletters, magazines, trade journals, wire services, broadcast transcripts as well as directories, corporate profiles, SEC Filings, business, industry and market news, federal and state case law, codes and regulations, law reviews and much more.

U.S. Historical Newspapers
This guide from Bowling Green State University provides links by state.
Chronicling America, 1770-1963
This project at the Library of Congress offers digitized papers from all states and provides a directory of papers published since 1960. Search by keyword, browse by date or place, or limit to dates or ethnic groups.

Microfilm and Microfiche

Microfilm and microfiche are housed in Multimedia Services on Level 2 of Mullins Library.

First time using fiche or film? Don't be intimidated. Ask at the Periodicals Desk or main service desk for assistance.

You can scan images (PDF or JPG format) of microfilm to a jump drive or to your email account. Instructions for scanning.

There is a guide to all microfilm research sets post on our web site. Below are a few that might be useful for this class:

American Colonization Society Records, 1792-1964
The American Colonization Society was formed in 1816 with the aim of helping freed people to emigrate from the United States to Africa. While attempting to remain neutral during the abolition debate, the Society drew support and attacks from both pro- and anti-slavery factions. After the Civil War, the Society continued work to aid emigration to Liberia and to support education and human welfare services in Liberia.
Annual Narrative and Statistical Reports from State Offices and County Agents: Arkansas, 1909-1944 Bookmark and Share
A part of Record Group 33.6 from the National Archives; these are the collected reports from county agricultural extension and home extension agents.
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Freedmen's Bureau Records
The Freedmen's Bureau (Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands) was established in March 1865 and was responsible for the welfare of newly freed citizens of the formerly Confederate states. It replaced and served as an office within the War Department. The Freedmen's Bureau documents, all from National Archives Record Group 105, provide detailed evidence from each southern state of the conditions of African Americans during the Reconstruction period.
Mississippi Oral History Collection
The Mississippi Oral History Collection was established at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1971 for the purpose of preserving on tape the memories and perceptions of important events in Mississippi history. Emphasis is on government, politics, business and ethnic relations; other topics covered include the National Cotton Council of America. Interviewees include Charles Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Erskine Caldwell, and members of the U.S. Congress. Most interviews date from 1971 to 1977.
SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Papers, 1959-1972
Provides documents produced by and correspondence to and from SNCC offices, including information on the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, Voter Education Projects, Freedom Schools, field reports from various state offices (including Arkansas) sit-ins and other direct actions, and more.
Southern Tenant Farmer's Union Papers, 1934-1970
The Southern Tenant Farmer's Union (STFU) was a bi-racial union of sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and small landowners. These documents contain information on the crisis in intellectual labor from the worker's point of view. The deplorable condition of these farmers, the founding and history of the union and its struggle for recognition are covered. The supplement, The Green Rising, features the personal papers and records of four of farm labor's dynamic leaders.
Tennessee Regional Oral History Collection of the Memphis Public Library
"Part I of the Tennessee Regional Oral History includes the memoirs of outstanding personalities in the social and political history of Tennessee. The collection contains reminiscences about two of Tennessee's most famous citizens, Congressional Medal of Honor winner Alvin 'Sergeant' York and longtime political power Ed 'Boss' Crump. Also available are interviews with prominent Memphis businessmen and an examination of the role of city planning in the development of Memphis." -- Introduction.

About United States Government Documents

The University Libraries have been a selective depository for United States documents since 1907, and we hold United States federal documents dating back to the 18th century. Documents are housed in Mullins Library, in Young Law Library, and in offsite storage and can be found in print, microform, and onlne

From 1976 - present most United States documents can be found in OneSearch.

Earlier documents may also be found in OneSearch or by using print or online indexes such as ProQuest Congressional. However, many pre-1976 documents can only be located by asking us.

Documents in the USDOC collection are arranged according to the Superintendent of Documents classification numbering system (SuDoc). More about the Superintendent of Documents System.

Digital Collections

Many libraries and archives have digitized important source collections and placed them online for everyone.

Some of the recommended sites listed here are free to all, others are subscription collections that the University Libraries have purchased for your use.

Please suggest other sources for this list by using the comments link below.

Documenting the American South
Offers both published works and manuscript materials covering the southern experience from the colonial period to the mid‐twentieth century. Includes diaries, letters, autobiographies, and other first‐person accounts, with subject and geographic indexes.
African American Women / Duke University
Diaries and letters from three different witnesses
Alcohol, Temperance, and Prohibition / Brown University
Pamphlets "published by various groups leading up to prohibition, during the prohibition era, and ending with the 21st amendment in 1933, which repealed the 18th amendment from 1919 prohibiting the manufacturing, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors."
America from the Great Depression to WWII: Farm Security Photographs
Presents more than 160,000 images from the Library of Congress collections.
America LIfe Histories: Federal Writer's Project, 1936-1940
Almost 3,000 interviews, sometimes known as "old settler interviews." "The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. " Browse by state or search by keyword.
Amistad Digital Resource
A collection of Web sites pertaining to school integration, protests, black power, urban unrest, and other aspects of the Civil Rights Movement, especially of the 1950s and 1960s

Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
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Covers: 1850s-. Offers non-fiction published works of leading African Americans, including interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters and periodicals such as The Black Panther.

Booker T. Washington Papers
The complete works, published by University of Illinois Press
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writer's Project, 1936-38
Offers "more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941 as the seventeen-volume Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves."
Civil Rights Digital LIbrary / Georgia State University
A collaborative project of dozens of archives and museums. Presents documents and images; browse or search by event, person, or place.
Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
150 oral history interviews from participants in the movement
Civil War Women / Duke University
Diaries and letters from three different witnesses
Commonwealth College Fortnightly
Commonwealth College was established in 1923 at the Newllano Cooperative Colony (near Leesville, Louisiana) to promote labor education and especially to educate leaders for the labor movement.
Core Historical Literature of Agriculture / Cornell University
A collection of more than 4500 texts published between 1810 and 1950. "Full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science,forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science."
Digital Library of Georgia / Georgia Galileo Project
Browse by Time Period to view books, letters, documents, and images from the colonial period through late 20th century.
Freedmen and Southern Society Project / University of Maryland
Offers 44 primary source documents selected from the Freedom series edited by Ira Berlin
Freedmen's Bureau Online
Digitized records selected by genealogist Christine Charity; with an emphasis on those records useful in family history research.
From Slavery to Freedom: The African American Pamphlet Collection / Library of Congress
Presents "396 pamphlets from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, published from 1822 through 1909, by African-American authors and others who wrote about slavery, African colonization, Emancipation, Reconstruction, and related topics."
In Motion: The African American Migration Experience
Presents documents, images, and maps from the salve voyages through 20th century Haitian migration. Many resources on the Great Migration period.
Kentuckiana Digital Library
Manuscripts, books, newspapers, images, oral history interviews, and more
Land of (Un)Equal Opportunity: Documenting the Civil Rights Struggle in Arkansas
Documents and images from the UA Libraries Special Collections Department, as well as other institutions around the state
Mark Twain and His Times
Includes Twain's work as well as correspondence and diary entries, reviews, sales information, popular reaction to characters, such as Jim, and essays on racism or other themes.
Max Hunter Folksong Collection / Missouri State University
"Audio files and song transcriptions of more than 1,000 songs recorded in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and Arkansas between 1956 and 1976 by Max Hunter, a traveling salesman."
National Archives: Digital Catalog Search
Search across collections for photographs, illustrations, film, and other digitized items freely available online. Examples include images of the 1927 Mississippi River flood from the Army Corps of Engineers, soil conservation images from the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, Mosquito eradication and other public health posters from the 1940s.
New Deal Network
An "educational web site sponsored by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Institute for Learning Technologies at Teachers College/Columbia University." Provides representative documents and photographs from New Deal cultural and economic programs.
Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida's Natural History, 1884-1934
Presents "personal correspondence, essays, typescripts, reports and memos; photographs, maps and postcards; and publications from individuals and the government" related to the history of the environment in the area that would become Everglades National Park

Sanborn Digital Maps for Arkansas This link opens in a new window
Covers 1867-1970. The Sanborn Map Company was the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years. Sanborn maps are valuable historical tools for urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, planners, environmentalists and anyone who wants to learn about the history, growth, and development of American cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
More than 700 ethnographic sound recordings and photographs collected by Lomax while traveling from Port Arthur, TX to the Library of Congress in 1939. Search by song text or subject.
The Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780 – 1925
Original documents from the Library of Congress and the University of North Carolina
WPA Early Settlers' Personal Histories of African Americans in Arkansas
Presents a dozen interview transcripts or brief forms for persons who were enslaved in Arkansas or who migrated to Arkansas after the war