HIST 241: History of Latinos in the United States: Primary Sources
What are primary sources?
Primary sources are materials directly related to a topic by time or participation. These materials include letters, speeches, diaries, newspaper articles from the time, oral history interviews, documents, photographs, artifacts, or anything else that provides firsthand accounts about a person or event.
Guides
This local guide provides assistance in pursuing research using primary sources, especially those we have available here in several formats: paper, republication, microfilm, and electronic. The database below helps identifies primary source repositories around the world.
ArchiveGrid serves as a single point of entry that provides online access to descriptions of archival collections held by thousands of libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives worldwide.
- Gale Primary SourcesGale Primary Sources is a search engine for Gale's historical digital collections of primary materials. You can search all at once or choose selectively. Consult the database to see the full-text collections available.
- Gale Archives UnboundGale Archives Unbound is a suite of collections, each devoted to a particular topic, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. The collections include primary, unpublished historical documents and draw from institutional sources, governmental sources, and private collections.
Oral Histories
New Roots: Voices from Carolina del Norte (UNC-Chapel Hill)
This is a a digital archive that contains the oral histories of Latin American migrants in North Carolina and the experiences of North Carolinians that have worked for the integration of new settlers into this southern state.
Voces Oral History Project (UT Austin)
The Voces Oral History Project documents and creates a better awareness of the contributions of U.S. Latinos and Latinas of the WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War generations.
Oral History Interviews (University of Notre Dame)
Oral history interviews are a major component of the Institute for Latino Studies’ effort to document and preserve Latino history. These interviews offer scholars and students “first person” narratives of American culture and society
Latina/o Diaspora in the Americas Project (University of Florida)
Am archive of 100+ oral histories dedicated to creating space for Latina/os to share their historical experiences related to identity, immigration reform, labor conditions, education, and civil rights.
Oral histories and more:
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries and Oral Histories includes 2,162 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of information, so providing a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
The Mexican Migration Project (MMP) was created in 1982 by an interdisciplinary team of researchers to further our understanding of the complex process of Mexican migration to the United States.
