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American History Websites:
20th Century
- American
Cultural History: The Twentieth Century
The purpose of these pages is to present a series of web guides on the
decades of the twentieth century. From the Kingwood College Library.
- The
American Experience: Nixon's China Game
Richard Nixon continues to be a source of fascination as well as
intense debate for political scientists and historians. This
companion Website to the PBS broadcast this month of "Nixon's
China Game" examines what is generally regarded as the main
triumph of the Nixon presidency, his opening of relations with
China. The site's best feature is an interview with Henry
Kissinger -- available in text, audio, and video -- in which he
discusses both the geopolitical strategizing and the
behind-closed-doors maneuvers at the White House that took place
before and during the summit.
- Civil
Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive
Maintained by the McCain Library and Archives at the University
of Southern Mississippi (USM), this Website features "an
Internet-accessible, fully searchable database of digitized
versions of rare and unique library and archival resources on
race relations in Mississippi."
- Cold War
Bibliography
Topics include: Recent Books on the Cold War; Concise annotated
bibliography; Institutions of the Cold War; Economic Impact of
the Cold War; Comparative and International Aspects of the Cold
War; The Cold War and American Culture; The Production of
Knowledge During the Cold War; The Evolution of Science Policy
and Research Funding; Miscellaneous subjects; Annotated
Filmography.Currently, the site contains 63 transcripts of oral
history, each one supplemented by a brief biography of the
interviewee, a list of topics discussed, information about the
circumstances of the interview, and best of all for researchers,
a find function for searching each transcript for particular
terms. Eventually, the Website plans to offer no less than 125
oral history transcripts that emphasize "local sources with truly
national significance." In addition, plans are in the works to
include photographs and distributed civil rights literature from
the time. Given Mississippi's pivotal role in the Civil Rights
movement, this site will surely be of great use to researchers of
the Civil Rights Movement.
- Conversations
with History
"Lively and unedited interviews . . . produced at the Institute
of International Studies at the University of California at
Berkeley." You will need the RealPlayer plug-in to view and hear
these interviews.
-
Foreign Relations of the United States
Selected volumes from the administrations of Presidents Truman,
Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, are available online.
- Freeze
Frame: Eadweard Muybridge's Photography of Motion
National Museum of American History
This site from the National Museum of American History examines
the famous sequences of photographs taken by the photographer
Eadweard Muybridge to explore the dynamics of human and animal
locomotion. (It was Muybridge's photographs, spaced only split
seconds apart, that first proved that at one point in a horse's
gallop all four legs are off the ground at once.) The site
features a number of Muybridge's sequences of men and women as
well as animals engaged in physical activity, often scantily clad
or in the nude to capture the physical dynamics of the
movements.
-
Guatemalan Death Squad Dossier and Relevant Declassified US Documents from
the National Security Archive's Guatemala Collection
On May 20, 1999 the Washington Office on Latin America, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, Human Rights Watch,
and National Security Archive (NSA) released a 54-page logbook
obtained from the Guatemalan military. The logbook, labeled the
Death Squad Dossier, documents, in coded detail, the executions
of 183 people at the hands of the Guatemalan security forces
between August 1983 and March 1985. The NSA has made the dossier
available online along with declassified US documents related to
Guatemalan death squad activities.
- History of
Vietnam and the Vietnam War
Created and maintained by Vets With A Mission, "a non-political
organization of Vietnam veterans which seeks to alleviate the
widespread suffering still victimizing the people of Vietnam,"
this Website offers a plethora of articles, research, book
excerpts, and other learning materials about the Vietnam War and
the history of Vietnam.
- I Hear America
Singing
This companion website to the PBS Broadcast of "I Hear America
Singing" presents great American baritone Thomas Hampson's
thoughts on American song -- both its words and music. The site
offers a timeline of American song composition, and charts its
development through the major composers (such as Stephen Foster
Collins, Samuel Barber, Charles Ives and others) as well as the
significant cultural influences (such as religious hymns, work
songs, American Transcendentalism, the Harlem Renaissance, and
others). Hampson's approach is unusual in its emphasis on the
significant status of the words in American song, and,
accordingly, the site emphasizes collaborations between
significant writers and composers, such as John Duke's settings
of Edwin Arlington Robinson poetry or Samuel Barber's work with
James Agee. For a companion site, the explanatory text is
extensive, and while we would of course wish for even more music,
the nine complete audio renditions of prominent American songs by
Hampson and other great American vocalists are worth a visit all
by themselves. The complete video of the special is also
available for purchase
-
Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project
This site, created by the University of Washington, is an
excellent, well-crafted, content-rich online exhibit paired with
a very useful guide to archival holdings on the same subject. The
subject is the forcible internment of Japanese Americans on the
American west coast. This exhibit chroniclesthe experiences of
Seattle's Japanese Americans in the Spring and Summer of 1942,
when they were removed from their homes and taken to Puyallup
assembly center, nicknamed "Camp Harmony" by Army information
officers.
- The Kennedy
Assassination
This site is devoted to the theory that Lee Harvey Oswald acted
alone.
-
The Korean War - Project Whistlestop
Provided by Project Whistlestop, the Harry S. Truman online
digital archive (reviewed in the July 17, 1998 Scout Report), this
site hosts an excellent collection of primary resources for
teaching or researching the Korean War. Most of these are offered
in the ongoing Week by Week section, which contains a chronology,
accounts, letters, presidential calendars, telegrams,
memorandums, and other digitized documents that trace
developments in the war on a daily and weekly basis. At present,
only the first few weeks of the war, June 24-July 21, 1950, are
complete. Other resources include photographs, teaching
materials, and related links.
-
Make the Dirt Fly!
Smithsonian Institution Libraries exhibition on the building of
the Panama Canal.
- Native Americans and
the Environment
This website promotes the research and study of environmental
issues facing Native American communities, particularly the
politics of land and treaty rights. The site also explores the
"values and historical experiences that Native Americans bring to
bear on environmental issues." Native Americans and the
Environment provides a bibliographic database, which covers
topics such as environmental justice, natural resource
utilization, land and treaty rights, and demography and
migration. The database currently contains over 1,500 citations,
and will be expanded to approximately 3,000 by the end of
1999.
-
Picturing the Century: One
Hundred Years of Photography from the National Archives
This site commemorates the end of the 20th century with a selection
of photographs from the vast and varied holdings of the National Archives
and Records Administration (NARA).
- Record of
American Democracy, 1984-1990 (ROAD) [ASC II, SPSS, Stata, or
SAS]
This Website from Harvard University serves as an indispensable
data source for researchers in social and political science. "The
Record Of American Democracy (ROAD) data include election
returns, socioeconomic summaries, and demographic measures of the
American public at unusually low levels of geographic
aggregation." The project, funded by the National Science
Foundation, covers every state in the country from 1984 through
1990 (including some off-year elections). Data posted include
"voting, registration and census data aggregated to Minor Civil
Division groups (a US census demographic district generally the
size of a small city)" as well as voting and registration data
aggregated to the precinct level. Among other things, these data
"should make possible many new studies of legislative
redistricting, and associated analyses and forecasts of political
and racial fairness, compactness, the consequences of equal
population constraints on gerrymanderers, and related issues."
The site is divided into two portions: the first offering an
extensive online handbook about the acquisition, character, and
uses of the data; the second providing the means to access the
data. Users may download the data using an SPSS portable zipped
file or SAS, Stata, or ASC II applications.
-
Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran
This special report from The New York Times on the Web
offers conclusive evidence of the United States's involvement in
the Iranian military coup d'etat of 1953 that brought
the Shah to power. The jewel in the crown here is a mysteriously
obtained copy of a still-classified CIA documentdetailing the
"inner workings" of a US plot to overthrow the elected prime
minister of Iran and install the Shah. In addition to the
document, the Website features an eight-part report detailing the
roots of US involvement, the engineering of the coup, and the
CIA's failed efforts to enlist the US press in the plan. An
archive of contemporaneous articles, photos, and page one stories
is also offered, as well as timelines of the coup period and of
US/Iran relations from 1941 to the present.
- The Tax History
Project
Established in 1995 by Tax Analysts, the Tax History Project
helps scholars, policymakers, students, and citizens easily
access primary historical documents relating to American tax
history. This rich resource archives US Treasury, White House,
and Congressional documents from the early national, Depression,
and World War II eras. Cartoon and poster image galleries
supplement the text archives. Other features include statistical
data on American taxation, Presidential Tax Returns, books
reviews, and links to tax policy discussion groups.
- Three from the New York Public Library Digital
Collections
Heading
West: Mapping the Territory
Touring West:
19th-century Performing Artists on the Overland Trails
Surveyors of the
West: William Henry Jackson and Robert Brewster Stanton
The New York Public Library has three major digital exhibitions
currently running to complement their in-house exhibits. Heading
West examines the exploration and development of the West using
maps from the library's collections. The accompanying text is
well written and addresses itself to exploding some of the myths
about the Frontier, including the myth of the West as settled by
lone pioneers. The maps are fascinating and allow for viewing in
several sizes. The 1859 map of the US and Mexico is worth a visit
by itself; visitors can view both territories in their entirety
or zoom in to a level where geographic features and the names of
individual towns and territories can be made out. Touring West
"celebrates the creators, promoters, and performers of
professional theater, music, and dance who toured the American
continent" from 1803 to 1893. The collection includes annotated
postings of playbills, broadsides, handbills, souvenirs,
postcards, and after 1848, photographs. These materials touch on
the major historical events of the time including abolition, the
development of the railroads, and the rise of certain American
dramatic icons who made their names playing European heroes --
James O'Neill, father of playwright Eugene O'Neill, among them.
Surveyors of the West features diaries, photographs,
stereographs, and field notes related to the work of William
Henry Jackson, a government photographer influential in the
establishment of US parks in the West, and Robert Brewster
Stanton, a civil and mining engineer who surveyed the Grand
Canyon between 1889 and 1890, and who was chief engineer for the
Denver Colorado Canyon and Pacific Railroad. Together, these
three -- or should we say, four -- exhibits constitute a
marvelous introduction to Western history via primary documents
and images from the era.
- US EPA History
Office
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was
established to implement Federal laws protecting the nation and
its people from pollution. In 1992, the Agency established a
history program to preserve and organize documents related to its
institutional memory. To further this mission, the Agency
recently created this site, which offers useful information to
potential researchers of the 200 cubic feet of EPA historical
documents. The heart of the site is the Collection section, which
offers abstracts and finding aids for the 90+ collections held at
the History Office.
- U.S. National Park
Service
The United States Department of the Interior has recently opened
its National Park Service (NPS) Web site, offering listings of
all U.S. national parks, monuments, historical sites, memorials,
and other designations by name, state, or region -- although
state and regional access is limited to clickable maps only at
this time. Each NPS site provides varying quantities of
information. "Preserving America's Heritage" contains exhaustive
information about natural resources and history in the parks, as
well as educational resources related to the NPS. "Caring for the
American Legacy" has useful information about the NPS, including
the nomenclature of the National Park System Units located under
"What is the National Park System?". There is also a "Hot Topics"
section of NPS issues.
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