History 1710: U.S. History: Race, Ethnicity, Immigration

The Port of New York Passenger Records 1820 - 1957 contains the passenger lists of almost 65 million immigrants, passengers, and crew members who came through Ellis Island and the Port of New York from 1820 to 1957. The period from 1892 to 1924 at Ellis Island was the largest human migration in modern history.

William Williams (1862-1947) collected these photographs while he was Commissioner of Immigration for the Port of New York at Ellis Island, 1902-5 and 1909-13.

More recent datasets and resources published by the Office of Immigration Statistics.

Library of Congress collections of text, image, video documents.

Themed sets of primary source documents for teaching

Federal Census records have been digitized by several of NARA's partners, and will eventually be available as well through the National Archives Catalog.

The online tool for teaching with documents, from the National Archives. See also the sub-collection for immigration:

Records -- text, image, video, ephemera, from the United States National Archives.

Collection of primary source links. See especially "Digital Collections."

Primary source collections exploring topics in history, literature, and culture developed by educators — complete with teaching guides for class use.

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, with 19 museums and the National Zoo—shaping the future by preserving our heritage, discovering new knowledge, and sharing our resources with the world.

The extensive collections at the Library of Congress contain historic artifacts and cultural materials from across the U.S. Click on the map below to see select items from your state.

The Oviatt Library Digital Collections feature historically significant documents, photographs, oral histories, artistic works and exhibit materials selected from the Oviatt Special Collections and Archives. Additional project contributors include local heritage organizations, neighboring academic institutions and private collectors. The majority of these collections focus on Los Angeles history with emphasis on the San Fernando Valley. Other collections include digital reproductions of documents from the Civil War, Slavery and it's aftermath, Chinese antiquities, and photographs from our Old China Hands Archives that document the experiences of foreign residents of China in 1946. The CSU Japanese American Digitization Project brings together diverse World War II documents from across fifteen campuses of the California State University system.

Provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and general exploration. Discover photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more. The collections on Calisphere have been digitized and contributed by all ten campuses of the University of California and other important libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state.

The central purpose of the California State University Japanese American History Digitization Project is to improve access to CSU archival collections about the history of Japanese Americans and to develop a functional model for ongoing planning and collaboration among the CSU archival and library community.

The OAC has more than 20,000 online collection guides. You can use these to browse, locate resources, or view selected items digitally — the OAC contains more than 220,000 digital images and documents — or learn how you can gain access to the physical objects. The OAC is a core component of UC's California Digital Library (CDL)

A curated list of state and regional digital projects and collaborations. For each project, the primary institution or institutions overseeing the project are noted. The list will expand as new projects are reviewed.

Spanning a wide range of visual media, the USC Digital Library offers digital images of drawings, illuminated manuscripts, maps, photographs, posters, prints, rare illustrated books, as well as audio and video recordings. Encompassing the subject strengths of the vast collections of the libraries at the University of Southern California, these materials represent the applied sciences, fine and decorative arts, history, performing arts, and social sciences. A portion of the images contained in the USC Digital Library come from the collections of collaborating institutions which, like USC, have valuable archival collections that are of interest to a wide range of people.

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The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is an online library of more than 144,000 digital items from Louisiana archives, libraries, museums, and other repositories, making unique historical treasure accessible to students, researchers, and the general public in Louisiana and across the globe. The items in the Louisiana Digital Library are as diverse and interesting as the people and places in Louisiana, with photographs, maps, manuscript materials, books, oral histories, and more documenting the state’s history and culture.

Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project at the University of California, Irvine actively assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The project contributes to expanding archives on Vietnamese Americans with the primary goal of capturing first-generation stories for students, researchers, and the community

The Center for Global Migration Studies provides a distinctive institutional home for interdisciplinary research, for training faculty and students, and for distributing information about the history of the immigrant experience to a broad public. In 2012, the Center established the Archive of Immigrant Voices to collect stories of the experience of migration. The purpose of the archive is to create, accumulate, and preserve a repository of memories that will not only reveal living history and features of the recent past, but will also document the fine lines of social change that might be otherwise ignored or lost to history.

Themed archive about the Bracero Program, which brought millions of Mexican guest workers to the United States.

See American History TV and History categories.

Densho Archives contain primary sources that document the Japanese American experience from immigration in the early 1900s through redress in the 1980s, with a strong focus on the World War II mass incarceration

The Detainee Allies Letter Collection documents the hidden stories of hundreds of refugees from human rights hot spots around the world--including Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, Brazil, Cameroon, Eritrea and China. The letters are from detainees held at various detention centers under the authority of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE). These letters provide insight into the lives of asylum seekers and migrants both before and during detention. Identifying information has been redacted to protect the privacy and safety of the writers. Letters date from July 2018 to present.

The Duke Collection of American Indian Oral History online provides access to typescripts of interviews (1967 -1972) conducted with hundreds of Indians in Oklahoma regarding the histories and cultures of their respective nations and tribes. Related are accounts of Indian ceremonies, customs, social conditions, philosophies, and standards of living.

See links for Additional Resources as well.

Documenting voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression.

The Korean American Digital Archive brings more than 13,000 pages of documents, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files together in one searchable collection that documents the Korean American community during the period of resistance to Japanese rule in Korea and reveal the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America between 1903 and 1965.

Immigrant Oral Histories presents a collection of over 360 oral history interviews conducted between 1967 and 2012 with recent immigrants to Minnesota and their American-born children, including both streaming audio and written transcripts accessible online in digital formats. These interviews are a unique source of contemporary history through the experiences of the newest Americans, in their own words. *Search in "Digital Collections" database.*

UC Berkeley Guide to digital collections.

UCSD Guide on Native American primary sources

Native American History Primary Sources: Pre-Columbian Era to Eighteenth Century. (Yale University Guide)

The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases are the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. See also the Image gallery and various explanatory essays.

SAADA creates a more inclusive society by giving voice to South Asian Americans through documenting, preserving, and sharing stories that represent their unique and diverse experiences.

South Asian Oral History Project (SAOHP) at the University of Washington Libraries represents one of the first attempts in the U.S. to record pan-South Asian immigrant experiences in the Pacific Northwest using the medium of oral history.

Catholic University of America Terence Vincent Powderly Photographic Prints collection studies the roots of U.S. immigration problems, with photos tracing the paths of immigrants from the docks of various European cities to their arrival at Ellis Island and even, in some instances, to their eventual place of settlement in America.

Making of America is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction

The Immigration History Research Center Archives is for the study of immigration, ethnicity, and race. Sources document a broad range of immigrant and refugee experiences.

This oral history project documents the life and experiences of Seattle’s Chinese immigrant community from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China, and other areas of the world. (Look for Oral History Interviews on left-hand side of Home page and the Video link tab.)

Digital archives of Vietnamese American experience.

The Welga Digital Archive - Bulosan Center for Filipino American Studies focuses on preserving and presenting the broad aspects of the Filipino American experience.

Digital archive collection materials from around the world.