LibGuides: CLS 201: Primary Sources

What are primary sources?

Primary sources are materials which provide first-hand evidence of an event, a social movement, or daily life in a particular time and place. Common examples of primary sources include letters, diaries, photographs, and oral history interviews. Depending on your research context, primary sources might also include newspaper articles, data, laws, treaties, or other legal documents.

Newspapers and Databases

Independent Voices from Reveal Digital This link opens in a new window
Project to digitize over 1 million pages from the magazines, journals and newspapers of the alternative press archives of participating libraries. These periodicals were 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.
Hispanic American Newspapers 1808-1980 This link opens in a new window
Represents the single largest compilation of Spanish-language newspapers printed in the U.S. during the 19th and 20th centuries. The distinctive collection features hundreds of Hispanic American newspapers, including many long scattered and forgotten titles published in the 19th century.
These Hispanic American newspapers reflect a long tradition of Spanish-language press in the western hemisphere. In the United States, the Hispanic press has played a vital role in the lives of immigrants, exiles and native Hispanic peoples alike. Often illustrated with photographic documentation, Hispanic American newspapers reveal the rich history of a people who have long resided in and contributed to the American public sphere. For more than two centuries, they have united Spanish speakers and preserved their cultural heritage through news, editorials and literature as well as by providing leadership, solidifying communities and spearheading social movements. They have covered every major theme in American history and culture and reported on events in Spanish-speaking countries not always available in traditional U.S. newspapers.
American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience This link opens in a new window Comprehensive, informative, and now even easier to use, The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience (LAE) is the latest version of the first-ever database dedicated to the history and culture of Latinos—the largest, fastest growing minority group in the United States. Latinos and Hispanics in the United States are an intrinsic part of our national identity. This enormous segment of the United States population today—comprising immigrants from dozens of Latin countries, as well as Spain—now accounts for over 15 percent of the overall U.S. population. The diversity of Latino cultures is wide ranging and their myriad cultural traditions reflect unique historical trajectories in the United States. The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience (LAE) explores the rich heritage and current culture of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Guatemalans, Cubans, Dominicans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, and other Hispanic cultures in the United States—an estimated 44 million individuals who have formed unique, self-sufficient, and vibrant communities across the nation. Designed and developed under the guidance of Latino librarians, LAE offers unparalleled depth and content that meets the specific research and curriculum needs of students, teachers, and librarians. The Analyze sections pose historic quandaries that invite learners to examine issues from all angles and develop their critical-thinking skills, while easy-to-use search and browse features facilitate research at every level. Coverage ranges from precontact Aztec and Maya societies to 21st-century political issues like recent immigration law to cultural themes like coming-of-age rituals, music, literature, and cuisine. The Latino American Experience is an indispensable electronic research and learning resource that provides learners with far more than history lessons with facts and figures; it gives voice to the Latino experience through Latino authors and contributors. Features • Content includes hundreds of primary documents and media, including speeches, maps, songs, audio clips, interviews, and vivid historical photographs • Faceted searching allows for fast and powerful refinement of search results • Ongoing content updates enrich the site throughout the school year—at no additional cost Highlights • Developed under the guidance of Advisory Editor Dr. Ilan Stavans and leading scholars, this resource provides trustworthy content by authorities in the field • Covers history and culture from all the countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Iberian Peninsula, including content on modern-day Latin American countries, the history of the Hispanic Diaspora, and indigenous peoples • Ties into curriculum standards with content and features geared to state-required studies on Latino history
Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collection: Series 1 This link opens in a new window
The Latino-Hispanic American Experience: The Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collection Series 1 is a digital collection of historical content pertaining to Chicano and Latino history, literature, political commentary, and culture in the U.S. Content focuses on the intellectual vigor and traditional values that have characterized them from the earliest moments of this country's history through contemporary times. The Latino-American Experience focuses exclusively on Latino-Hispanic history in the United States.
American Memory Project This link opens in a new window
American Memory is a gateway to several collections held at the Library of Congress that document the American experience. There are over 100 collections available, which you can browse by subject, time period, location, or format. Materials included in these collections date from 1400 – present and include manuscripts, maps, photographs, sheet music, sound recordings, and much more.

Data and Statistics

Pew Research Center: A non-partisan public opinion polling and demographic research organization. Includes public opinion polls on immigration.

US Census Bureau Foreign Born Data: The U.S. Census Bureau provides a variety of demographic, social, economic, geographic, and housing information on the foreign-born population in the United States.

US Census Bureau Hispanic Population Data: Official page from the U.S. Census Bureau with reports and data about the Latino population from Census surveys.

Latino Stats : American Hispanics by the numbers

Online Resources

Chicana Por Mi Raza. The Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Project and Archive was created under the supervision of professor María Cotera and Linda Garcia Merchant in collaboration with The Institute for Computing in Humanities Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. This project was made possible through the generous financial support of the University of Michigan and the many women who shared their time, their memories, and their artifacts.

Farmworker Movement Documentation Project : Cesar Chavez, The Farmworker Movement: 1962-1993. Primary source accounts: photographs, oral histories, videos, essays and historical documents from the United Farm Worker Delano Grape Strikers and the UFW Volunteers who worked with Cesar Chavez to build his farmworker movement. This site is now being presented and preserved by The Library, University of California San Diego. As of April 10, 2014, there is still some site content and functionality that is being migrated from its original location. We anticipate this work to be completed in the next few months.

Historias, a subsection of StoryCorps, provides the recorded stories of Latinos around the country.

Mexican Labor and World War II: The Bracero Program. Online compilation courtesy of Franky Abbott, Digital Public Library of America and Hillary Brady, Digital Public Library of America. Beginning in World War II, the Bracero Program brought Mexican laborers to the United States to remedy wartime production shortages. The program (which derived its name from the Spanish word for a manual laborer, “bracero”) continued until 1964, with braceros working mainly in agricultural areas in the Southwest and on the West Coast. Braceros worked long hours for low wages in difficult jobs that separated them from their families. In the United States, they also faced discrimination and became the subject of national labor debates. Get new insight into the Bracero Program and its workers through this collection of era photographs, documents, and oral history interviews. Time period : The Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945)

Oral History Interviews (Hope College/Holland Joint Archives).. An extensive collection of oral history transcripts covering a variety of events, ethnic groups, and citizens of Holland, Michigan. Includes sections on members of the Hispanic community (1990), Dutch immigrants (1992), Hispanic residents (1993), and Asian and African American Residents (1994).

Puerto Rican Migration to the US. Online compilation courtesy of Samantha Gibson and the Digital Public Library of America. Puerto Rican migration to the United States exploded in the decades following World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican men, women, and families arrived in US cities and towns, and Puerto Rican communities grew dramatically in places like Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Springfield, Massachusetts, and Newark, New Jersey. Eighty-five percent of Puerto Rican migrants during this time settled in New York City, which had included a sizeable Puerto Rican population since since the 1910s.... For much of the early twentieth century, Puerto Rico was an agrarian society that struggled with high unemployment rates and poverty. With the advent of affordable air travel and a boom in industrial jobs in the United States following World War II, many Puerto Ricans moved to the US in pursuit of better economic opportunities. Operation Bootstrap—a series of state-sponsored programs by the US and Puerto Rican governments in the 1940s and ’50s to urbanize, modernize, and industrialize Puerto Rico’s economy through investment and job creation by US companies—also encouraged Puerto Rican migration. As the economy of Puerto Rico shifted from agriculture to industry, Operation Bootstrap included provisions for farm workers to be transported from Puerto Rico to American farms.... Puerto Ricans had the freedom to travel to the United States as citizens but, like immigrants from a foreign country, they faced challenges of adapting to new cultural, social, and economic surroundings. In New York and other cities, Puerto Rican men and women were employed in a range of industries but also encountered language barriers and discrimination based on race and ethnicity. Puerto Rican communities had an important cultural impact on New York and other places across the country by introducing new styles of music and art. Puerto Rican migration to the US slowed during the economic downturn of the 1970s. Today, however, Puerto Rican communities continue to exist across the United States. In recent years, Puerto Rican migration to the US, especially Florida, has increased again in response to the island’s economic crisis and severe debt. Time period: Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s).

The United Farm Workers and the Delano Grape Strike. Online compilation courtesy of Franky Abbott, Digital Public Library of America. On September 8, 1965, Filipino farm workers organized as the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC) decided to strike against grape growers in Delano, California, to protest years of poor pay and working conditions. The Delano Grape Strike grew from a long history of labor organizing and protest by Filipino workers in agriculture and canning on the West Coast. AWOC leaders asked the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), a mostly Latino farm workers union led by Cesar Chavez, to join their strike. The Delano Grape Strike was the first major collaboration between Filipino and Mexican workers, who had traditionally been recruited to work during the other group’s protest actions. In August 1966, the two organizations merged to form the United Farm Workers (UFW), a union committed to nonviolent protest that sought to organize migrant farm laborers to improve their wages, education, housing, and legal protections.... The protest that began in the fields in Delano grew into a broader boycott that asked for help from consumers in urban areas. By 1970, the UFW grape boycott was a success. Table grape growers signed their first union contracts, granting workers better pay, benefits, and protections. In the decades that followed, Chavez and the UFW continued to use nonviolent strikes, boycotts, marches, and fasts to help farm workers stand up for their rights and gather support from ordinary Americans to aid them in their efforts. This primary source set uses documents, photographs, and promotional materials to explore the events of the Delano Grape Strike and the formation of the United Farm Workers. Time period: Postwar United States (1945 to early 1970s).

MSU Libraries

Course Guides

CLS 201

What are primary sources?

Newspapers and Databases

Data and Statistics

Online Resources