LibGuides: Twentieth Century American History: Primary Sources

Finding Books that are Primary Sources

To identify books that are primary sources:

1) Look for books written by people who were involved in the event or activity you are researching. (Tip: When you look at secondary sources, write down the names of people and then look for them as authors.)

2) In the Moody Library Online catalog, books that have been assigned subjects with the subheadings in the list below might be primary sources. Not all books that include primary sources will include one of these words or phrases in a subject heading.

--Diaries
--Correspondence
--Biography
--Sources
--Anecdotes
--Personal narratives
--Interviews

Examples:

Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919 -- Correspondence

San Francisco (Calif.) -- Social conditions -- Sources

Historians -- United States -- Diaries

Depressions -- 1929 -- United States -- Personal narratives

Some Online Primary Sources

Documenting American violence [electronic resource] : a sourcebook / by edited by Christopher Waldrep and Michael Bellesiles.
Call Number: Ebsco HN90 .V5 D66 2006 (also ebrary)
ISBN: 0195150031
Documenting American Violence brings together excerpts from a wide range of sources about incidents of violence in the United States. Each document is set into context, allowing readers to see the event through the viewpoints of contemporary participants and witnesses and to understand how these deeds have been excused, condemned, or vilified by society. Organized topically, this volume looks at such diverse topics as famous crimes, vigilantism, industrial violence, domestic abuse, and state-sanctioned violence. Among the primary sources that describe these events are: Benjamin Franklin's account of the Conestoga massacre, when an entire village of American Indians was killed by the Paxton Boys, a group of frontier settlers, militant abolitionist John Brown's attack on Harpers Ferry, Ida B. Wells's condemnation of lynchings in the South, the massacre of General Custer's 7th Cavalry at Little Bighorn, as witnessed by Cheyenne war chief Two Moon, Nat Turner's confession about the slave revolt he led in Southampton County, Virginia, Oliver Wendell Holmes's diaries and letters from when he was a young infantry officer in the Civil War, a police officer's account of the Haymarket Trials, Harry Thaw's murder of the Gilded Age's most prominent architect, Stanford White, through his own published version of the events, the post-trial, public confessions of Ray Bryant and J. W. Milam for the murder of Emmett Till, the Los Angeles Police Department's investigation into the causes of the 1992 riot.

The primary souce materials listed below are all located in Ebsco E-books a digital library of full-text e-books. HCU owns access to the books below and more than 50,000 more. Direct links to these books are provided in the online catalog record or you may go to the Ebsco site to search the content of our books.

Primary Sources in the Reference Collection

Annals of America
Call Number: E173.A793 vol. 1-21
ISBN: 0852299605
Covering Columbus to the 21st century, it now includes more than 2,000 primary documents—proclamations, speeches, poems, songs, newspaper and magazine articles, sermons, letters and editorials by the people who made history. In addition to such widely available texts as the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address, it includes essential works by Jane Addams, Clarence Darrow, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Noah Webster, Walt Whitman and more than a thousand others.
Cold War presidency : a documentary history / by Thomas S. Langston.
Call Number: E176.1.L265 2007
ISBN: 1933116382
Langston has assembled speeches, position papers, bills and laws, reports, and other documents to illustrate the goals, accomplishments, and failures of nine US presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. A first section sets the context with documents from the end of World War II, and a final one looks at legacies of a 50-year war. He provides a series of introductory essays for each section explaining major issues and events. Biographical sketches and a chronology are appended.
Historic documents
Call Number: Ref. E839.5.H57 1972-2011
ISBN: 1568027249
The Historic Documents series makes primary source research easy by presenting in one volume key excerpts from documents relating to the important events of each year for the United States and the world. Each volume includes eighty to ninety documents from a particular year, from official or other influential reports and surveys, to speeches from leaders and other opinion makers, to court cases, legislation, and testimony, and much more.

Examples of U.S. History Primary Sources

Moody Library has a number of sets of papers of important Americans including many presidents, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and and Eisenhower. Also we have papers of other important Americans such as Adlai Stevenson. These papers are excellent primary sources to use in historical research. To find these sets of papers do a title search in the HCU online catalog for "Papers of ..." or "Public papers of ...".

Some other examples of primary source materials are presented below.

Eisenhower : the prewar diaries and selected papers, 1905-1941 / by Daniel D. Holt, editor ; James W. Leyerzapf, associate editor ; introduction by John S.D. Eisenhower.
Call Number: E742.5.E372 1998
ISBN: 0801856744
Holt introduces readers to Dwight Eisenhower's pre-WW II military career through the material gathered in this book. A compendium of Ike's private correspondence, formal memos, speeches he ghost-wrote for superiors, and perhaps most important, his diaries, the volume sheds new light on Eisenhower's work, family life, and worldview. The ebb and flow of life in the peacetime military are well represented here; so, too, are Eisenhower's assessments of associates in the armed forces, including some withering, acute criticisms of General Douglas MacArthur, for whom he worked both in Washington and the Philippines.
Let freedom ring : a documentary history of the modern civil rights movement / by edited by Peter B. Levy.
Call Number: E185.61.D64 1992b
ISBN: 0275934349
This book traces the story of the civil rights movement through the written and spoken words of those who participated in it. It includes both classic texts, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and lesser-known gems, such as Robert Moses' "Letter from a Mississippi Jail Cell" and James Lawson's address to SNCC's 1960 founding meeting.
Ripples of hope [electronic resource] : great American civil rights speeches / by edited by Josh Gottheimer ; foreword by Bill Clinton ; afterword by Mary Frances Berry.
Call Number: Credo E184 .A1 R53 2003
ISBN: 0465027539
Brings together the most influential and important voices from two hundred years of America's struggle for civil rights, including essential speeches from leaders, both famous and obscure. With voices as diverse as Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, Betty Friedan, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth, this anthology constitutes a unique chronicle of the nation's civil rights movements and the critical issues they've tackled, from slavery and suffrage to immigration and affirmative action.
Sixties radicals, then and now : candid conversations with those who shaped the era / by by Ron Chepesiuk.
Call Number: HN90.R3 C48 1995
ISBN: 0899507786
Paul Krassner, Cleveland Sellers, Jane Adams, Dave Dellinger, Bill Ayers, Warren Hinckle, Peter Berg, Noam Chomsky, Timothy Leary, Philip Berrigan, Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Ericka Huggins, Jim Fouratt, Bernardine Dohrn, Barry Melton, Peter Coyote, and Abbie Hoffman reflect on the seminal events that dominated the sixties and discuss the major issues and problems facing America today.