[Slavery & Abolition] Larison, C. W. Silvia Dubois (Now 116 Yers Old): A Biografy of the Slav who Whipt her Mistres and Gand her Fredom (1883) documents the life of an African American woman born into slavery in New Jersey. It is one of the few nineteenth-century printed narratives centered.....
[Seattle, Washington] "Seattle in 1878" Seattle city panorama photograph documenting the early urban landscape of Seattle only a few decades after its founding and before the city’s transformation into a major Pacific Northwest commercial center. The image records Seattle in 1878 when the settlement remained a small timber port dependent.....
[Drag][Las Vegas] Las Vegas Drag photo album, circa 1970s, depicting female impersonators and performers during a formative period in LGBTQ+ performance history. Several images show drag showgirl Joey Skilbred, known professionally as Jocelyn Somers. The album provides direct visual evidence of Las Vegas drag performance culture as it developed in.....
Industrial Extraction and Scientific Farming in the Interwar Midwest: Ruhm’s Phosphate & Chemical Company (Mt. Pleasant, Tennessee). Photograph album documenting phosphate mining, processing, fertilizer application, and Illinois farm yield demonstrations. Circa 1928. Oblong black album (11 x 7½ inches) containing 77 silver gelatin photographs (majority captioned in typed slips, several.....
[Mexico] [Photography] Vernacular photograph album documenting daily life, labor, and civic culture in Mexico and California, 1906–1908, with substantial visual material from the late Porfirian era preceding the Mexican Revolution. The album records markets, religious architecture, rural labor, and public spectacle across central Mexico, alongside views of communities in the.....
US Army manuals on counterintelligence, interrogation, and combat. FM 30-17 Counterintelligence Operations, FM 30-15 Intelligence Interrogation, FM 30-5 Combat Intelligence, and the Fort Huachuca subcourse Counterintelligence Investigations trace the Army's printed intelligence doctrine from January 1972 to June 1989. The sequence begins after the Army established Military Intelligence as a......
Keller, Helen. Inscribed Color Photograph, mid-twentieth century. This presentation photograph documents Helen Keller in later life, dressed in academic regalia, accompanied by a handwritten manifesto-like inscription articulating her philosophy of collective disability rights. As the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree and an international lecturer on.....
[Midwest][Urban Development] Photo Archive documenting the construction of one of the first McDonalds franchise locations in Wisconsin. The archive chronicles the development of roadside land on South Hastings Way into a branded fast food franchise in 1958-1960, a direct record of how postwar commercial urbanization reached west central Wisconsin through.....
Boston lesbian and gay pride photo negative slides documenting public queer mobilization in Boston in 1980. The sequence shows how Boston Pride was staged in public space: speeches from a podium, crowds gathered in the park, identifiable groups under banners, and marchers moving into the street. Compiled by an attendee.....
[African American][Voting Rights] New Constitution for the State of Illinois. 1870 printing of the Illinois Constitution ratified after the Civil War documents Reconstruction-era legal reform in a Midwestern state that had previously enforced restrictive Black Codes despite its status as a free state. By the outbreak of the Civil War.....
Elk Creek Mining Company photograph album documenting coal extraction, transportation networks, and company town life in Milner, Colorado during the early twentieth century. The photographs record operations of one of the principal coal producers in Routt County at a time when Colorado coal fueled railroads and industrial markets throughout the.....
Photographic archive documenting U.S.–Mexico border conditions during the Mexican Revolution period, capturing American military presence, cross-border observation, and recorded instances of violence in northern Mexico between approximately 1908 and 1915. The group includes a real photo postcard captioned “Triple execution in Mexico,” presenting direct visual evidence of execution practices during.....
[Prohibition][Law and Policy] Correspondence on Prohibition and enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment between a New York lawyer and a clergyman, 1926. Eleven letters consisting of 27 pages, exchanged between Rev. W. Russell Bowie, rector of Grace Church in New York City and a prominent Episcopal clergyman, and Seymour van Santvoord.....
[Jim Crow] [Florida] Segregated public facility photograph archive from Clearwater, Florida, by George Fulmer, 1951. Collection consists of 14 photographs, including 7 black-and-white photographs and 7 associated film negatives documenting African American children in a newly opened library and schoolyard, as well as a segregated swimming-pool planning meeting attended by.....
This compelling photo archive consists of 22 real photo postcards, most with white-ink captions in the negative, depicting U.S. soldiers, Mexican Federal troops, executions, trench-warfare scenes, and cross-border skirmish zones along the Rio Grande during the Mexican Revolution and the U.S.–Mexican Border War of the 1910s. Printed in sepia and.....
[Asian American][Chinese American][San Francisco Chinatown] Chinese American family photograph archive dating from approximately the 1930s through the 1960s, with images of everyday life, community celebration, and military service in the Chinese American community during the mid twentieth century. The photographs show multiple generations of Chinese American men, women, and children.....
Pearl Harbor salvage operations and Navy deep sea diving work extensive archive documenting the military career of Navy diver John Krohta from the late 1930s through the Cold War era. A Department of the Interior letter addressed to Krohta states, “I understand that you were on the Medusa on December.....
African American school and youth education photographs dating from the early twentieth century through the 1940s document the institutional development of Black education during the era of segregation in the United States. The images record students and teachers in grade schools, college classrooms, and organized youth programs, illustrating the growth.....
[World War I] Fort Bliss soldier training and camp life photo album from El Paso, ca. 1918, recording the rapid wartime expansion of a border post into a large World War I training environment through tent rows, drill formations, truck convoys, gas-mask instruction, and group portraits of enlisted men in.....
[Texas History][Borderlands] U.S.-Mexico borderlands photograph album, 1905-1906, centered on El Paso and Juárez, with additional views in New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, and Alaska. The album documents an early twentieth-century traveler’s movement through the southern border of the U.S., when El Paso and Ciudad Juárez were being promoted through rail.....
New Deal-era western construction and industrial expansion across California, Oregon, and Washington, recorded in an extensive family photo album with inscribed dates, locations and details. The album records the surge of dam, bridge, road, harbor, and flood-control work that followed Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal public works programs. The photographs record.....
Tuscan Morning Star Lodge No. 48 annual banquet photograph documenting African American fraternal life and community leadership in Philadelphia during the late 1940s. The image records members and guests of a lodge affiliated with Prince Hall Freemasonry, a network of lodges founded in the eighteenth century to provide African American.....
[Slavery & Abolition] [Underground Railroad] [ Fugitive Slave] Signed letter mentioning threats of arson against an abolitionist community in Pennsylvania, 1850. Lancaster stood on a volatile antislavery route in 1850, with fugitives moving west toward Columbia and the Susquehanna River while pro slavery men targeted communities accused of sheltering escapees.....
[Labor] Industrial rock drilling photograph archive documenting Gardner Denver and drill carrier machinery in factory, yard, and field settings, circa 1960s, recording how specialized drilling equipment was designed, serviced, and operated in steep-cut and tunnel construction environments. The group centers on crawler-mounted drills, compressor-fed hose systems, and rail-mounted heavy equipment.....
USS General H. B. Freeman album compiled by Emerson A. Wallace, 1945, documenting the first wartime voyages of the Coast Guard manned Navy transport AP 143 as it carried troops, ship personnel, and military passengers through the final months of World War II and the opening phase of occupation travel.....
