Research Guides: Guide to Primary Sources: Protest & Social Movements

Links to collections

Revolution and Protest Online
Explores protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present.
Revolutions, protests, resistance and social movements from the 18th century through the 21st century, documented through personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, images, video, and speeches.
Federal Response to Radicalism in the 1960s
Primary sources documenting American radical groups; covers internal organization, personnel, and movements to change American government and society through political, social, cultural, and economic issues.

American Radicalism Collection
Books, pamphlets, periodicals, posters, and ephemera covering a wide range of viewpoints on political, social, economic, and cultural issues and movements in the US and the world. Collection from Michigan State University.
Civil Rights History Project
Oral histories (with interview transcripts) and digital photographs of people who participated in the civil rights movement. From the Library of Congress.
Civil Rights Digital Library
Film, texts, images, interviews, and oral histories on the US Civil Rights Movement. From the Digital Library of Georgia.

Disability in the Modern World
Interdisciplinary focus on disability scholarship, including primary sources, supporting materials, video, and archives. Mass media and activism are covered.

Disability History Museum
Primary documents and visual materials to "help expand knowledge and understanding about the historical experience of people with disabilities in the United States."
Emma Goldman Papers
Essays, letters, speeches, photographs, and other historical documents from the Emma Goldman Papers, plus finding aids and links to other resources. Goldman (1869-1940) was a major figure in the history of radical and feminist movements in the U.S.
The Empty Closet
One of the oldest continuously published LGBT newspapers in the United States. Full text of issues from 1971 - 2020.
Farmworker Movement
Primary source accounts from those who worked with Cesar Chavez to build the farmworker movement (1962-1993).
Occupy Archive
Archive of the digital evidence and stories from worldwide Occupy protests that began in September 2011.
Joseph Labadie Collection
One of the oldest and most comprehensive collections covering anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, antiwar and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, ecology, labor and workers’ rights, feminism, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.
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Includes books, pamphlets, periodicals, printed ephemera and holdings of posters, photographs, sheet music, pinback buttons, and scrapbooks. Also includes archival and manuscript material, as well as recordings of speeches, debates, oral histories, and protest songs.

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Primary sources documenting women's movements and women activists in the US, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. Topics include women and antislavery, women's suffrage, the Feminist movement, Equal Rights movement, and women's role in Civil Rights .
Independent Voices
Collection of open access alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals. Publications produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press, and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Black Abolitionist Papers (1830-1865)
Primary sources, including writings and publications, of African American activists involved in the movement to end slavery in the United States between 1830 and 1865
Detailed Guide to this resource.
Women and Social Movements, International
Conference proceedings, organization reports, publications, and websites of women's non-governmental organizations. Also includes letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century, as well as photographs and videos of major events and activists in the history of women’s international social movements.
Detailed Guide to this resource.
Women and Social Movements, Modern Empires Since 1820
Explores world history since 1820 through conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told by women's voices.
Border and Migration Studies Online
Covers over thirty border areas worldwide, including: U.S. and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; Thailand; and others. Historical background covered through text, video, and images
Detailed Guide to this resource.
Human Rights Studies Online
Comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes across the world, from 1900 to 2010. Includes primary and secondary source materials.
Detailed Guide to this resource.
LGBT Thought and Culture
Books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements, through the 20th century up to the present.
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974
Brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
LGBT Magazine Archive (1950-2015)
Archival runs of 26 of the most influential serial publications covering LGBT interests. 1954-2015
Includes The Advocate and Gay Times. Chronicles more than six decades of the history and culture of the LGBT community.
Environmental Issues Online
Multimedia materials - texts, video, audio, archival primary sources - covering environmental challenges, including climate change, water/air pollution, biodiversity, conservation, agriculture, deforestation, and more.
Explores the relationship between people and the environment through social, cultural, economic, political, historical and ecological perspectives.

African Activist Archive Project
Documents on activism in the US supporting the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice, from the 1950s through the 1990s.