Focus Your Search

State and especially local history gives students a chance to understand the people, places and things around them with which they’re already familiar. Originally compiled and produced by publishers and subscriptions agents for area residents and patrons, the original histories are difficult-to-find materials. Included in this collection on Ohio are 21 cities and regions covered in 305 titles. These titles comprise tables and lists of vital statistics, military service records, municipal and county officers, chronologies, portraits of individuals, and views of urban and rural life not found anywhere else. The atlases provide additional information on land use, settlement patterns, and scarce early town and city plans.

These files document an important moment in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances [i.e. outlawed racial segregation] in relation to interstate transportation restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. However, the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South. The Freedom Riders set out to challenge this status quo by riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses. The first Freedom Ride began on May 5, 1961. Led by CORE Director James Farmer, 13 riders (seven black, six white) left Washington, D.C., on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending with a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana. Only minor trouble was encountered in Virginia and North Carolina, but some of the Riders were arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Winnsboro, South Carolina. Mob violence in Birmingham, Alabama would attempt to end this first Freedom Ride.

The Great Society was a set of domestic programs proposed or enacted on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. Johnson launched an "unconditional war on poverty" in the first months of his presidency with the goal of eliminating hunger and deprivation from American life. The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs. The OEO reflected a fragile consensus among policymakers that the best way to deal with poverty was not simply to raise the incomes of the poor but to help them better themselves through education, job training, and community development. Historians have suggested that the most important domestic achievement of the Great Society may have been its success in translating some of the demands of the civil rights movement into law. The collection contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes of meetings, convention programs, and other records concerning the activities of Maurice Dawkins, Assistant Director for Civil Rights in the Office of Economic Opportunity. Reports, assessments, and background documents also include: Justice Department Task Force on Civil Rights, 1968; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Report on Ghettoes, 1967; Poor People’s Campaign and OEO, 1968; civil rights and the anti-poverty war; application of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Equal Employment Opportunities and the U.S. Civil Service Commission; OEO reports on Job Corps centers; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings in Montgomery, Ala., for 1968; and 1967 Booz-Allen & Hamilton report on statewide education study in Mississippi. Files contain information regarding civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr; Roy Wilkins; Whitney Young; and Andrew Young. This publication consists of documents comprising RG 381, Records of the Community Services Administration, Records of the Office of Civil Rights, Program Records of the Assistant Director for Civil Rights, November 1965-December 1968, MLR Entry 1005. All documents were originally filmed in their entirety.

This archive reproduces microfilm of the U.S. Department of State Decimal Files 611.94 and 6194.11. The documents trace the commercial relations between the United States and Japan over the course of almost half a century in the years 1910-1929, 1930-1939, 1940-1944, and 1945-1949. The files are predominantly instructions to -- and dispatches from -- diplomatic and consular officials. Notes between the Department of State and foreign diplomats in the United States; memoranda prepared by State Department officials; and correspondence with officials of other government departments, private businesses, and persons are also featured. Subjects include: advertising, aircraft, commerce, customs administration, drug regulations, duties, embargo, free ports, landing certificates, law, markets, merchandise, prison made goods, pure food and drug regulations, smuggling, tariff treaties, export and import trade, undervaluation of imported merchandise, among many other topics.

The collection includes the proceedings for 1856-1988 of the Republican National Conventions, providing gavel to gavel coverage of the conventions, including speeches, debates, votes, and party platforms. Also included are lists of names of convention delegates and alternates. Records of the earliest proceedings are based in part on contemporary newspaper accounts.

John L. LeFlore (1903–1976) was the most significant figure in the struggle for black equality in Mobile, Alabama, throughout southern Alabama and Mississippi, and along the Florida Gulf Coast. Materials in the collection document LeFlore's prolific work in both public and private life. LeFlore was the first African American appointed to the Housing Board and, with J. Gary Cooper, was the first African American elected to the state legislature from Mobile since Reconstruction. The bulk of the materials date between 1961 and 1975.

When George H. W. Bush became president in 1989 the United States had already begun to see a thawing of relations with the Soviet Union. President Bush spoke of softening relations in his inaugural address, claiming that "a new breeze is blowing," and adding that "great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom." This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the events leading up to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and its implications for U.S.-Soviet relations. The collection consists of three FOIA files from the Bush Library. The first file contains material related to the Moscow summit and the coup in August 1991 against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. This file contains cables sent to the White House situation room concerning day-by-day developments, and conversations between President Bush and other foreign leaders. The second file, which concerns the dissolution of the Soviet Union, highlights the Bush administration’s response to the dissolution and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Documents here concern economic and humanitarian support, diplomatic recognition of the republics, aiding the transition to democratic governments and market economies, and defense issues, particularly the fate and control over the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. The last FOIA file contains materials on the meeting between President Bush and President Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta (December 2–3, 1989) and the subsequent meetings between President Bush and NATO leaders in Brussels (December 3– 4, 1989). 

This archive covers the trial of Julia and Ethel Rosenberg, a nondescript couple accused in 1950 by the U.S. government of operating a Soviet spy network and giving the Soviet Union plans for the atomic bomb. The trial of the Rosenbergs, which began in March 6, 1951, became a political event of greater importance than any damage they may have done to the United States. It was one of the most controversial trials of the twentieth century. After months in prison the Rosenbergs maintained their innocence and began to write poignant letters, which were widely published, protesting their treatment. A movement began to protest the “injustice” of the Rosenberg trial. In the months between the sentencing and execution, criticism of the trial grew more strident, and major demonstrations were held. Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, called the case “a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation.” In spite of attempts at appeal and a temporary state of execution by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953. Both refused to confess. Their guilt and the harshness of their sentences continue to be vigorously debated. Recent studies of the couple’s activities show that the evidence against them was overwhelming. It is difficult, however, to imagine the execution of a married couple with young children without understanding the paranoia the Cold War produced. Since the early 1950s the Rosenbergs have been viewed by many as martyrs, conveniently sacrificed by an iniquitous United States in the name of anticommunism.

In February 1945 Uruguay signed the Declaration by United Nations and officially declared war on the Axis power, although it did not participate in any actual fighting. Prior to 1945, Uruguay came to the attention of the world as the final resting place of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee, scuttled in the port of Montevideo in December 1939 following the Battle of the River Plate. During the Second World War and the Korean War, Uruguay saw economic prosperity supplying beef, wool, and leather to the Allies. Juan José de Amézaga Landaroso, President from 1943-1947, led his country through the closing years of the Second World War. From 1952-1967, the presidency was effectively abolished and a nine-member National Council of Government (Consejo Nacional de Gobierno) was established in its place. The “presidency” rotated among the members of the majority party, with presidents serving annual terms. The idea behind this collegiate body (colegiado) was that it would lower the risk of a dictatorship emerging. Publications relating to political relations between the United States and other states generally include cables, memoranda, and correspondence addressing the political affairs and concerns affecting the particular state. Covering primarily the early Cold War documents, this collection gives researchers a unique insight into American foreign policy during one of its most stressful periods in international relations. After World War II, with only two superpowers vying for influence, access, and control, the United States looked to its state department to provide detailed analyses and insight into political affairs. As such these records are bound to be of great interest to diplomatic historians and historians studying these countries, seeking to understand American foreign affairs during this period.

For over the past 200 years, the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, and deforestation, have caused the concentrations of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" to increase significantly in our atmosphere. This collection documents the U.S. response to the threat posed by climatic change and global warming. The research behind the studies, reports, and analyses represents an exhaustive review of the facts, causes, and economic and political implications of a phenomenon that threatens every region of the world.

This collection consists of index cards listing the name, date and place of birth, occupation and last address of Jews whose German citizenship was revoked in accordance with the "Nuremberg Laws" of 1935, including Jews from Germany, Austria and Czech Bohemia. The cards are generally in alphabetical order. Suffix names "Israel" for men and "Sara" for women were added by law in 1936 to readily identify persons of Jewish descent.

Africa's entrance into the international arena and American Cold War politics, helped fuel the Civil Rights and the Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Composed of FBI surveillance files on the activities of the African Liberation Support Committee and All African People's Revolutionary Party; this collection provides two unique views on African American support for liberation struggles in Africa, the issues of Pan-Africanism and Militant Black nationalism, as well as the role of African independence movements as political leverage for domestic Black struggles.

During the Korean War, a Federal Defense History Program was established, generating a series of reports from the civilian control agencies. This collection consists of 178 titles from 21 agencies involved in administering the mobilization and managing the economy during this difficult time. These years demonstrated how considerations of national security were to become an integral part of almost every federal policy decision, and how, in most instances, policy was to be administered by civilian agencies with permanent status. These histories are of enormous importance to students of government administration, economics, political science, business, and commerce.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is a UK organization that advocates the abandonment of nuclear weapons by the UK and the world. This collection collects internal documents of the CND from 1985 to 1990, such as its national council minutes, committee records, the Trade Union CND papers, other affiliated group's papers, as well as external documents such as local group newsletters. In addition it contains speeches and articles by Bruce Kent from 1981-1989. Bruce Kent was the CND's general secretary from 1980-1985 and chair from 1987-1990.

The FBI files on Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. that make up this collection were assembled by Dr. Gerald Horne, author of Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party, and the breadth of issues addressed by these records is astounding. Davis served as a leader in local, district, and national leadership bodies of the Communist Party USA and thus concerned himself with a broad range of organizational, political, and theoretical questions. There is news of organizing successes and failures at grassroots level, minutes from meetings held on all the levels on which Davis engaged, and reports from member-informers on all the major political and theoretical debates.

Reports of the Charity Organization Society of New York - This collection facilitates study of the crisis in urban development faced by the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Charity Organization Society was at the centre of reform work, and its reports provide a detailed account of living conditions and describe investigations of health, industry, delinquency, insanity and crime.

In November 1945, President Truman appointed General George C. Marshall as special envoy to China and instructed him to negotiate a cease-fire agreement between Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops and Chinese Communist forces. Marshall met at length with Chiang, Chou En-lai, and Mao Tse-tung. Although a cease-fire was declared in January 1946, peace negotiations stalled over the question of political unification. Marshall returned to the United States in early 1947 without having reached a solution. This collection comprises the complete records of the Marshall mission and are among the best English-language sources available for studying Chinese political and military situations following World War II, as well as U.S. policy in China. The minutes of Marshall's meetings and reports and memoranda prepared by U.S. advisers are all included. Information on the military front is provided by reports from U.S. observers in the field who investigated cease-fire violations.

These twenty-six narratives were designed to provide commissioned naval officers with interim summaries of actions prior to the availability of official histories. As such, these narratives are more polished historical accounts than were recorded in the original battle experiences reports. Drawn from action reports, operation orders, war diaries, and personal interviews, the documents contain charts and photographs. Although most of the reports describe action in the Pacific theater, the North African landings, the Sicilian campaign, and the Salerno landings are also the subjects of separate narratives.

This archive reveals more than a century of U.S.-Morocco relations and includes, among various documents, correspondences from U.S. ministers in Tangier and Tetuan. It is sourced from the Central Files of the General Records of the Department of State. The records are under the jurisdiction of the Legislative and Diplomatic Branch of the Civil Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) was a Christian pacifist group founded in December 1914 as a direct result of World War I. The membership was originally, but not exclusively, non-conformist and Quaker. This collection consists of the minute books and early papers, including: General Committee minutes; Executive Committee minutes; records of the Literature Committee; the Propaganda Committee; the Christian Pacifist Management Committee; the World War One Committee; the Post-World War One Committee; and other documents. This collection documents the formation of the FOR, and gives a detailed record of its role during WWI, and its views on such key issues as conscription, appeasement and disarmament.