Archives Unbound:
American Studies
 
Archives Unbound: American Studies

Supporting a deep dive into American culture, primary source materials in this collection help researchers explore music, art, literature, and cinema from all regions of the country in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Race Relations

American Indian Correspondence: Presbyterian Historical Society Collection of Missionaries' Letters, 1833-1893 - The men and women of the Foreign Board of Missions served a variety of tribes. Their letters, intended to be reports from the field, are far more than dry discussions of mission business. Ranging in length from single fragments to reports of over twenty pages, they describe the Indian peoples and cultures, tribal factionalism, relations with the U.S. government, and the many problems and achievements of the work. The letters often become personal and even anguished, as the writers disclose their fears, worries, and hopes.

Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984 - Between the early 1920s and early 1980s, the Justice Department and its Federal Bureau of Investigation engaged in widespread investigation of those deemed politically suspect. Prominent among the targets of this sometimes coordinated, sometimes independent surveillance were aliens, members of various protest groups, Socialists, Communists, pacifists, militant labor unionists, ethnic or racial nationalists, and outspoken opponents of the policies of the incumbent presidents.

Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers, 1944-1946 - The rosters, which are part of the Records of the War Relocation Authority, consist of alphabetical lists of evacuees resident at the relocation centers during the period of their existence. The lists typically provide the following information about the individual evacuees: name, family number, sex, date of birth, marital status, citizenship status, alien registration number, method of original entry into center (from an assembly center, other institution, Hawaii, another relocation center, birth, or other), date of entry, pre-evacuation address, center address, type of final departure (indefinite leave, internment, repatriation, segregation, relocation, or death), date of departure, and final destination. Included for each center are summary tabulations on evacuees resident at the center and on total admissions and departures.

Introduction to U.S. History: Slavery in America - Introduction to U.S. History: Slavery in America is a digital collection of over 600 documents in 75,000 pages selected by Vernon Burton and Troy Smith from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This collection documents key aspects of the history of slavery in America from its origins in Africa to its abolition, including materials on the slave trade, plantation life, emancipation, pro-slavery and anti-slavery arguments, the religious views on slavery, etc.

Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life - Although histories exist about this chapter in American history, this digital collection of Japanese relocation camp newspapers record the concerns and the day-to-day life of the interned Japanese-Americans. Although articles in these files frequently appear in Japanese, most of the papers are in English or in dual text. Many of the 25 titles constituting this collection are complete or substantially complete.

Japanese American Internment: Records of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library - In an atmosphere of hysteria following U.S. entry into the Second World War, and with the support of officials at all levels of the federal government, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the U.S. military broad powers to ban any citizen from a wide coastal area stretching from the state of Washington to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington. The same executive order, as well as other war-time orders and restrictions, were also applied to smaller numbers of residents of the United States of Italian or German descent. Yet while these individuals (and others from those groups) suffered grievous violations of their civil liberties, the war-time measures applied to Japanese Americans were harsher and more sweeping. Entire communities were uprooted by an executive order that targeted U.S. citizens and resident aliens. This publication consists of the documents from The Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Small Collections, “Japanese American Internment Collections,” in the custody of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.

Personal Justice Denied: Public Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment, 1981 - These documents reflect the Commission's twenty days of hearings and testimonies from more than 750 witnesses between July and December 1981, in cities across the country. These witnesses included Japanese Americans and Aleuts who had lived through the events of WWII, former government officials who ran the internment program, public figures, internees, organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League, interested citizens, historians, and other professionals who have studied the subjects of the Commission's inquiry. Included also are publications, reports, press releases, photographs, newspaper clippings, and transcripts that relate to the hearings. Many of the transcripts are personal stories of experiences of evacuees.