New York Times Historical Offers full-text, full-image articles of The New York Times, going back to 1851. The database can be used to search national and international news, editorials, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, plus historical photos and advertisements. The documents are downloadable in PDF format. How to export to RefWorks
Detroit Free Press Historical Covers several editions of the Detroit Free Press from 1831-1999.
Chicago Defender (Proquest Historical Newspapers) Covers several editions of the Chicago Defender newspaper from 1909-1975.
Reveal Digital: Independent Voices A growing collection of magazines, journals, and newspapers of the independent alternative press of the 1960s-1980s. Good primary sources for the history of feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Latinos, gays, lesbians and more.
Oakland (formerly Pontiac) Press
Available in microfilm from the university archives
Detroit Jewish News (online)
The Detroit Tribune, 1933 and 1935-1966 (online archive of the African American newspaper)
History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle Digitized collections of major research libraries, including the NAACP papers. Many documents on Detroit history.
Oakland University Archives and Special Collections
Oakland County history, Billie Farmum papers documenting Oakland County during the Great Society, numerous local publications and reference sources.
Walter P. Reuther Library
Has digital collections of images, audio clips and more.
Bentley Historical Library
Sources on Detroit and Michigan history. See for example the guide to Detroit and the Great Migration.
Burton Historical Collection
The archives at the Detroit Public Library, documenting Detroit history.
Virtual Motor City
Historical photos from the Detroit News Collection
American Black Journal
A TV show that started in 1968 to provide a forum for African American Detroiters
Detroit Journeys
Oral histories documenting the lives of ordinary Detroiters
Some of the books at KL may provide primary documents. For example: Arthur L. Johnson's Memoir and other books in Wayne State's African American Life Series.
Additional sources
- The guide on Michigan history lists many other sources documenting Detroit
- Google Newspaper Archive (historical newspapers from 19th- and 20th century America)
- Time Magazine Archive - Civil Rights
- Detroit 67 project (Detroit Historical Society)
- Detroit Historical Society Online Collections
- Kresge Library Catalog
Find books, journal articles, government documents, and primary sources at KL. - MelCat
A statewide catalog of many of Michigan's libraries. It allows you to request books at another library be sent to Kresge Library for you. - WorldCat
A global catalog of libraries. It allows you to request books at a library beyond Michigan to be sent to you.
Interlibrary Loan
You may request materials we don't have and we'll borrow them from another library for you.
America: History & Life The definitive index of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. Provides indexing for 1,700 journals. How to export to RefWorks. Coverage: 1964-present
JSTOR Full text of core scholarly journals from their beginning to approximately one year ago. Disciplines include botany, business, ecology, general science, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and statistics. Browsable by discipline and full-text searchable across all disciplines. Especially good for historic or classic articles in most fields. Coverage: 1665 to present. How to export to RefWorks
Project MUSE Full text of many history journals
Refworks allows you to create a personal database of references and automatically generate formatted bibliographies for your projects.
Dominique Daniel
Humanities Librarian for History and Modern Languages
daniel@oakland.edu
248.370.2478