LibGuides: History: Find Primary Sources

Primary Sources

A primary source provides direct or firsthand evidence about an event, object, person, or work of art. Primary sources include historical and legal documents, eyewitness accounts, results of experiments, statistical data, pieces of creative writing, audio and video recordings, speeches, and art objects. Interviews, surveys, fieldwork, and Internet communications via email, blogs, listservs, and newsgroups are also primary sources.

When would I need to find primary sources? If you're working on a history project, you may be asked to find and cite primary sources to analyze something from the past, like posters from political activism in modern African history. If you're working on a sociology project, you may be asked to find demographic data on homeless in Los Angeles. Both documents would be considered primary sources in each case.

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CSUDH Historical Images Collection This link opens in a new window
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The CSUDH Digital Collections are digitized photographs and documents from our collections, including the history of CSUDH, the South Bay, Rancho San Pedro and the Dominguez family, and more.
Global Issues Library This link opens in a new window
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Primary sources, books, and more on a variety key issues including border and migration studies, human rights studies, security issues, environmental issues, and revolution and protest.

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Primary Sources on the Web

The Black Abolitionist Papers
Rare primary source collection
Supports scholarly understanding of black activism
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Period of coverage: 1830-1865
Duke’s Behind the Veil (African American Life in Jim Crow South)
A selection of 410 recorded oral history interviews chronicling African-American life during the age of legal segregation in the American South, from the 1890s to the 1950s.
Civil Rights Digital Library
The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.
Library of Congress Civil Rights History Project
On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directs the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record new interviews with people who participated in the struggle, over a five year period beginning in 2010.
Historical Newspapers Online
A guide to historical U.S. newspapers that are freely available on the Internet.