Guides: HIST 598: Topics in Modern U.S. History: Voting Rights History since 1865: Home

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U.S. History
by Kristen Howard Last Updated Jan 6, 2025 218 views this year

U.S. Law Guide
Resources for U.S. Law compiled by McGill Law Librarians.

Find Secondary Sources

Find books

Find books by searching the Library Catalogue by keyword or by subject heading. Try subject heading searches such as:

su: Voting United States History
su: Voter registration Government policy United States
su: Minorities Suffrage United States History

Tip: also try searching for books assigned in class and seeing what subject headings have been applied to those books.

Law Library:

Don't forget to visit the Gelber Law Library! All books with a call number beginning with K (Law) are located in the Law Library.

Find peer-reviewed articles

America: History and Life (EBSCO)
Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.

Find Primary Sources

Newspapers & Periodicals

America's Historical Newspapers (Readex)
Over a thousand U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and 1922, including titles from all 50 states.

Accessible Archives: African American Newspaper Collection
This enormous collection of newspapers written by and for African Americans contains a wealth of information about cultural life and history during the 1800s and is rich with first-hand reports of the major events and issues of the day, including the Mexican War, Presidential and Congressional addresses, Congressional abstracts, business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion.
Historical African American Newspapers Available Online
This guide, curated by librarian Elizabeth Clarke (Marist College, NY) provides a list of historical African American Newspapers available online as part of digitization projects at libraries and historical societies as well as digitization projects done by Google.

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources)
Full-text, facsimile image database of over 500 national and regional American newspapers. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab

Single titles include:

Atlanta Constitution (1868-1945)
Atlanta Daily World (1931-2003)
Boston Globe (1872-1991)
Chicago Defender (1909-1975)
Chicago Tribune (1849-1998)
New York Times (1851-2019 -- other access points are available for more recent years to the present)
Wall Street Journal (1889-2011 -- other access points are available for more recent years to the present)
There are far more individual newspapers available! If you have a question about a specific newspaper, please feel free to email your librarian at kristen.howard@mcgill.ca.

Collections for individual states from ProQuest Historical Newspapers include:

News, Policy and Politics Magazine Archive (ProQuest)
Digital access to the archival runs of major 20th/21st-century consumer magazines including Newsweek, In These Times, Europe, New Internationalist and NATO Review. Coverage: 1918 - 2015
Additional subjects: Current events, Diplomacy/ peacemaking,Ethics,Human rights, International relations,Media history and Military operations.

Laws

Federal Elections and Voting Rights resources
From the Federal Depository Library Program. Fast resource to find historical documents from 1787 (U.S. Constitution) to 2010 (Ruling on Citizens United).
U.S. Law Guide
Resources for U.S. Law compiled by McGill Law Librarians.

Making of Modern Law: Primary Sources (Gale Primary Sources)
Online access to state and municipal codes, documents relating to constitutional conventions, and other resources in US legal history.
The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab

Primary Source Collections

Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (Alexander Street)
A resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Includes the Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffragette Movement and many resources related to women's suffrage.
Race Relations in America (Adam Matthew)
Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict. Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
Making of Modern Law: American Civil Liberties Union Papers (Gale Primary Sources)
Search the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) records on free speech, citizenship, race, discrimination, and other topics. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States: A Selection of Primary Sources (ProQuest)
This website contains over 3,000 documents focused on six different phases of Black Freedom:
Slavery and the Abolitionist Movement (1790-1860)
The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era (1861-1877)
Jim Crow Era from 1878 to the Great Depression (1878-1932)
The New Deal and World War II (1933-1945)
The Civil Rights and Black Power Movements (1946-1975)
The Contemporary Era (1976-2000)
Broadcasting America: The Rise of Mass Media and Communications (Adam Matthew)
The papers of early pioneer, David Sarnoff, and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), chart the rise of mass media and the impact of broadcasting innovations such as television, advertising and consumer culture, from the dawn of a new era of mass broadcasting, and beyond.
The Sixties : primary sources and personal narratives 1960-1974 (Alexander Street)
The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960–1974 brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
Includes documents on the subjects: voter fraud, voting, voting rights

Freedom Archives
The Freedom Archives is a non-profit educational archive located in California dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of historical audio, video and print materials documenting progressive movements and culture from the 1960s to the 1990s.
Includes items under the subject Civil Rights, and a number of items from a keyword search "vote" or "voting".

Statistics

Historical Statistics of the United States (Cambridge)
The standard source for the quantitative facts of American history. Includes voter turnout in presidential elections (1824-2000), congressional elections (1824-1998), and tables on party affiliation and public opinion.
Under "Table of Contents" on the lefthand side, click "E. Governance and International Relations" and then "Eb. Elections and Politics."
Social Explorer
Explore over 500,000 data indicators and over 220 years of data for the United States from present to 1790, including all Decennial Censuses, American Community Surveys and many other datasets.

Citations

History as a discipline uses the Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition) for citations, and usually the Notes-Bibliography form. This requires creating properly formatted footnotes footnotes and a Bibliography for your assignments. Resources to understand the Chicago style of citations are included below.

Note: Chicago Manual of Style updated to the 18th edition in September 2024.

HCS Guide to the Chicago Manual of Style
A guide to the Chicago Manual of Style developed for students in History and Classics (18th edition).

The Chicago Manual of Style, 18th Edition
Publication Date: 2024
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition by Kate L. Turabian
Call Number: LB2369 T8 2018
Publication Date: 2018
A guide to Chicago Manual of Style with more information on hard-to-cite or unusual sources than the original manual. Note that this manual has not yet been updated to reflect the changes in the 18th edition of Chicago.

Guides

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide
McGill Library Citation Subject Guide
Under "citation styles by subject", select "History" for more resources on Chicago style.

Library Support

Chicago Workshops
McGill Librarians offer virtual Chicago Citation Style workshops every term. Follow this link to find and register for upcoming workshops!
Citation Management
Attend a workshop to learn how to use Zotero or EndNote, useful citation management systems. Zotero is highly recommended for History students!

Librarian

Emily Jaeger-McEnroe

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