Research Guides: AAAS/HIS 154B: Race, Science, and Society: Digital Collections of Primary Sources

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Think about what terms that might have been used to describe your topic during the time period. For example: the name of a specific person or organization or even a term that wouldn't be used today.

In addition to searching, try browsing these collections to learn about sources that you wouldn't have necessarily thought of searching for.

Digital Collections of Primary Sources

NAACP Papers This link opens in a new window
See Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle
Archives of Sexuality and Gender This link opens in a new window
Digitized primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. Find a wide range of materials, such as: oral histories from the African Women's Life History Project; declassified FBI files detailing surveillance of gays and lesbians in the U.S. from 1950 to 1982; and erotica from the "Private Case" of the British Museum Library.
Our access includes: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Parts I and II; Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century; International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture; and Community and Identity in North America.
Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle This link opens in a new window
Includes records of major civil rights organizations and personal papers of leaders and observers of the 20th century Black freedom struggle. Includes records of the Associated Negro Press relating to medicine.
Black Thought and Culture This link opens in a new window
Covers the non-fiction published works by major American Black leaders. Where possible, the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamphlets, and letters.

Digital Collections from Harvard's Center for the History of Medicine
Includes digital exhibits, documents and images related to the history of health care and medicine.

Public Health Archives: Public Health in Modern America, 1890-1970 This link opens in a new window
Documents the rise of the twentieth-century public health system in the United States through correspondence, reports, pamphlets, ephemera, and more.
HistoryMakers Digital Archive This link opens in a new window
The largest African American video oral history archive. Includes interviews with individuals from the medical profession, as well as interviews about public health and medicine.

Digital Public Library of America
Digitized materials from libraries, archives and museums around the country.
Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South
Oral history interviews discussing African-American life in the South, from the 1890s to the 1950s
Digital Projects from the National Library of Medicine
Provides access to many of the National Library of Medicine's historical resources.
Smithsonian Collection
Search records of museum objects, archives and library materials including images, audio, and videos.
Digital Projects from the Wellcome Library
The Wellcome Library has digitized many resources related to the history of medicine, including sources related to African Americans.
Science History Institute Digital Collection
Digitized primary sources, including artifacts, photographs, advertisements, letters, and rare books. Covers the Roman Empire to the 21st century.
Medical Care, Nazism, and the Holocaust
Oral histories, photographs, diaries, and other digitized primary sources about the work of European doctors, nurses, and others healthcare providers between 1933 to 1945.
New York Academy of Medicine's Digital Collections and Exhibitions
Digitized materials from the rare book and historical collections.
Smithsonian Trade Literature Collection
Includes catalogs and books that were part of the merchandising of American business, providing insights about technology, marketing, consumption, and design. Trade literature includes printed or handwritten lists, often illustrated, of items offered for sale ranging in size from small pamphlets to oversized folios of several hundred pages. While much of the collection has not been digitized, you can scroll down the homepage to browse online collections, such as Instruments for Science
American Philosophical Society
Provides access to a range of digitized items from the American Philosophical Society.
The Nobel Museum
The Nobel Prize Museum holds exhibitions, programs, and lectures about "the great issues of our time."
Documenting the American South
Texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Example source: Oral history interview about improving the poor conditions for African American patients at Palmetto State Hospital
Seeing is Believing, New York Public Library Exhibit
Includes illustrations that were essential in spreading new scientific and medical ideas.
Voices from the Days of Slavery
Slave narratives from the Library of Congress. "The almost seven hours of recorded interviews presented here took place between 1932 and 1975 in nine Southern states. Twenty-three interviewees, born between 1823 and the early 1860s, discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, coercion of slaves, their families, and freedom. Several individuals sing songs, many of which were learned during the time of their enslavement. It is important to note that all of the interviewees spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives that are reflected in these recordings."
W.E.B. DuBois Papers
"Includes over 100,000 items of correspondence (more than three quarters of the papers), speeches, articles, newspaper columns, nonfiction books, research materials, book reviews, pamphlets and leaflets, petitions, novels, essays, forewords, student papers, manuscripts of pageants, plays, short stories and fables, poetry, photographs, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, videotapes, audiotapes, and miscellaneous materials. Scholar, writer, editor of The Crisis and other journals, co-founder of the Niagara Movement, the NAACP, and the Pan African Congresses, international spokesperson for peace and for the rights of oppressed minorities, W.E.B. Du Bois was a son of Massachusetts who articulated the strivings of African Americans and developed a trenchant analysis of the problem of the color line in the twentieth century." (UMASS Amherst Special Collections)

Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law (HeinOnline) This link opens in a new window
This collection brings together significant legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. This includes every statute passed by every colony and state on slavery, every federal statute dealing with slavery, and all reported state and federal cases on slavery.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
While we usually search JSTOR for more recent scholarship, it can be a great resource for finding older journal articles from scholarly journals which represent views on race, science, and society from earlier time periods. For example, JSTOR has coverage of the American Journal of Sociology going back to 1895. When using JSTOR to locate primary sources, make sure to limit to your historical period of interest.
Women and Social Movements in the United States (1600-2000) This link opens in a new window
A collection of document projects--comprised of essays with supporting documents, images, and web links--focused on the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000
Women and Social Movements, International-- 1840 to Present This link opens in a new window
Focuses on women’s activism across the world, from 1840 to the present. Includes primary sources on topics related to peace, human trafficking, poverty, child labor, literacy, global inequality, and more.
Database available through at least May 31, 2025, as part of ProQuest's Evidence-Based Acquisition Program.
Women and Social Movements, Modern Empires since 1820 This link opens in a new window
Explores prominent themes related to conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women’s voices. This archival database includes documents related to the Habsburg, Ottoman, British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States empires, and to settler societies in the United States and South Africa.
Database available through at least May 31, 2025, as part of ProQuest's Evidence-Based Acquisition Program.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960-1974 This link opens in a new window
Includes diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, newspapers, press, underground press, alternative publications, and scholarly commentary. This collection includes materials digitized from collections in Brandeis University Archives & Special Collections, including materials on student activism and radical politics.