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US History Free Primary Sources

This is a guide with links to digital primary sources, mainly archives and other organizational collections.

Advertising

Ad*Access

"Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955."


Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850-1920

"Over 3,300 advertising items and publications dating from 1850 to 1920, illustrating the rise of consumer culture and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States."


Phillip Morris USA, Inc. Advertising Archive

This website contains images of content in the Philip Morris USA Inc. Advertising Archive. These images include print ads, outdoor ads, and marketing materials dating back to the early 1900s, including some materials which may not have been published or publicly displayed.

Film and Television

Television Academy Foundation Interviews

Hundreds of oral history interviews with professionals from the television industry which aim to chronicle the evolution of television from its early days to the present.

Food

Early American Cookbooks

A collection of cookbooks published in the United States between 1800 and 1920.


Feeding America

"Feeding America is an online collection of some of the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century. The digital archive includes 76 cookbooks from the MSU Libraries' collection as well as searchable full-text transcriptions."


What America Ate

"Preserving America's Culinary History from the Great Depression". A collection of sources from around the country - cookbooks, photos, sources from the "America Eats" program - collected and digitized by Michigan State University.

Music

Hip Hop Archives

Digital collection of news clippings, photographs, press packets, correspondence and more, from the archive of music journalist and publicist Bill Adler. Adler worked at Def Jam Records from 1984 to 1990.

Print

Digital Comic Museum

An archive of public domain Golden Age comics and other pulp magazines dating fromt he 1930s to the 1950s.