Chicana & Chicano Studies (CHIC): Primary Sources

Spanning more than 120 thematic collections, this resource includes several million pages of full-text documents, maps, diaries, posters, ephemera, photographs, and other textual and visual primary source material spanning the 15th through 20th centuries.

American Politics and Society is a wide-ranging category, focused on American Politics in the 19th and 20th centuries. The collections in this category range span records of Temperance organizations, 1830-1933; immigration records during the massive immigration wave from 1880-1930; legal collections from the Harvard Law School Library, including papers of three Supreme Court Justices; numerous collections on Progressive Era politics; and records from the Franklin D. Roosevelt White House through Gerald R. Ford presidencies.

Available through June 30, 2025

The only fully searchable digital archive, available via Readex platform; covering foreign perspectives of American racial issues in the mid-20th century, American Race Relations: Global Perspectives is derived from the archives of the Central Intelligence Agency. A wealth of unique primary source documents on racial justice from around the world, it provides new insight into many of the most important historical events and movements of the last hundred years. Covering topics like segregation, race riots, arts and literature, Brown v. Board of Education and other important court cases, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the rise of indigenous rights in countries around the world, this archive provides unique viewpoints on Americas fight for racial justice and rare insight into race relations in Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

This database available via Gale, brings together approximately 1.5 million pages of primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Rare and unique content from a variety of primary sources sheds light on the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more.

Arte Público Hispanic Historical Collection, Series 1 & 2, is an archive of publications covering U.S. Chicano/Latino/Hispanic history, literature and culture from colonial times until 1960. Based on materials from the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project at the University of Houston, the collection includes complete text of hundreds of rare books by Chicano/Latino/Hispanic Americans, over 60,000 historical articles from newspapers, magazines and journals, 250,000 + pages of personal and organizational manuscripts including hundreds of political and religious pamphlets, broadsides, editorials, essays, letters, telegrams, speeches, transcripts, photographs, and advertisements. Content is written in Spanish (80%) and English (20%) and is indexed and searchable in both Spanish and English.

From womens suffrage to discrimination of all kinds, Civil Rights in America: From Reconstruction to the Great Society is a fully searchable archive of official publications and primary source material related to civil rights in the United States. Coverage spanning from the myriad rights issues surrounding African Americans to the issues related to other ethnic groups, laborers, children and undocumented workers, as seen through the eyes of those who experienced them, it includes varied perspectives and firsthand accounts of freedom and segregation, origin and history of the Ku Klux Klan, challenges of the Freedmans Bureau, history of child labor regulations, founding and growth of Black colleges, establishment of the property rights of women, educational equality for minority children, integration and fair housing, labor unions, immigration studies tracking 20th-century racial minorities, maternity rights of women, national and regional attitudes towards race and gender, school integration and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the evolving debate about unauthorized border crossings and much more.

Food Studies Online provides archival content, visual ephemera, books, articles, and videos that explore how food shapes the world around us. It supports interdisciplinary inquiry into the role of food and food systems in shaping culture, economics, business, politics, and the process of globalization. This resource contains primary sources from the National Archives, including government documents, posters, recipes, cookbooks, and marketing pamphlets, as well as access to the Food Ephemera Collection, which contains 5,000 pages of material from the turn of the century through the 1960s on food campaigns. Videos include documentaries, interview series, and vintage commercials. To help discover materials, use the primary search box, or browse by title, subject, publisher, or collection.

In 1979, the Carter Administration created the White House Office of Hispanic Affairs in order to address issues of critical importance to the Latino community. Major topics covered in this collection include inflation, bilingual education, police brutality, political unrest in Latin America, Haitian refugees, and immigration (legal and otherwise), Puerto Rican self-determination, and the U.S. Navy’s use of Vieques Island. Latino Civil Rights during the Carter Administration also documents some of the most important Latino organizations of the time, including LULAC, TELACU, La Raza, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the American G.I. Forum.

Available through June 30, 2025

LGBT Thought and Culture is an online resource 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 150,000 pages of rare archival content, including seminal texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera.

This collection reproduces correspondence, reports, speeches, minutes; included are materials relating to the farm workers, poverty programs, Public Law 78, Braceros, labor camps, the United Farm Workers Union and the Delano Grape Strike.

Provides primary and secondary sources for the study of womens activism and social movements in the United States from colonial times to the present, including the full-text books, documents, articles, bibliographies, and images. Also included are teaching tools with lesson plans, a chronology of U.S. women's history, and a Dictionary of Social Movements.

Womens Issues and Identities is an archive of primary and secondary sources from across the globe that illuminate history from the female point of view. Notable collections within the archive include: Women and Health/Mental Health, Grassroots Feminist Organizations, Women and the Law and European Womens Periodicals.

Archives of Latin America and Caribbean History, Sixteenth through Twentieth Century contains over 1.3 million pages of primary source material providing information about the indigenous peoples of the region, the Conquest (la Conquista), colonial rule, religion, struggles for independence, and political, economic, and social progress and issues in newly independent nations. In addition to keyword searching, users can access the collection by Person, Topic, Event, Named Work, and Country. The historical collections provide original manuscripts, signed letters, expedition records, reports, maps, diaries, descriptions of voyages, ephemera, and more and support researchers, postgraduates, and undergraduates with interests in regional studies, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, economics, and international relations.

This database is available via Readex. Newspapers from all 50 states from the late 17th up to early 20th centuries. Search by dates and eras, article types (e.g. news/opinion, birth notices, etc.), place of publication.

Hispanic American Newspapers, 1808-1980, represents the single largest compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. The distinctive collection features hundreds of Hispanic American newspapers, including many long scattered and forgotten titles published in the 19th century. It is based on the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, a national research effort directed by Nicols Kanellos, Brown Foundation Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston.
Time period covered: 1808-1980

This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.

This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.

This historical newspaper provides first-hand accounts and coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.

19th Century U.S. Newspapers is a full-text searchable, facsimile-image digital collection of over 400 U.S. newspapers from 1800-1900. Every aspect of society and every region of the nation is found in the collection, from rural and urban, large cities and small towns, coast to coast and beyond. Major newspapers stand alongside those published by African Americans, Native Americans, womens rights groups, labor groups, the Confederacy, and more. Particular emphasis is placed on major historical events such as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life. Also included are illustrated papers that bring the nineteenth century to life through the drawings of many artists.

This historical newspaper covers first-hand accounts and coverage of politics, society and events of the time.

This database is similar to AP Images available on the EBSCO platform. This mobile friendly version is available via the Associated Press platform. It contains millions of photos, graphics, text, and audio clips from the worldwide Associated Press (AP) newswire service. In addition to current news images (updated hourly, real-time), it includes historical photos back to the 1800s, and audio clips back to the early 1900s. All material is copyright owned by AP, but available from this database for educational use. Useful for finding images on any topic (people, nature, politics, business, sports, entertainment, etc.) to use in presentations.