Silent Protest Parade on Fifth Avenue, New York City, July 28, 1917 in response to the East St. Louis Race Riot. Retrieved from NYPL.
Keep in mind that as you begin to develop a specific research topic there may be more pertinent primary source archives for you to utilize, the below resources are just jumping off points.
General United States History
Keep in mind these might have resources pertinent to the breakouts listed below as well.
American Antiquarian Society
"The AAS library houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States, as well as manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources and reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century." Go to the Digital AAS page to see all of the online primary source documents, with offerings such as A New Nation Votes (a searchable collection of election returns from the earliest years of American democracy).
The American Presidency Project
An extensive collection of materials relating to the Presidency including election data, speeches, party platforms, documents, and other materials.
American Memory
Provides free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. Collections are primarily from the Library of Congress, but also includes material from other institutions as well.
Archives of American Art
"The Archives of American Art collects, preserves, and makes available primary sources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States." It has resources from the "past 200 years and consist of more than 20 million letters, diaries, scrapbooks, manuscripts, financial records, photographs, films, and audiovisual recordings of artists, dealers, collectors, critics, scholars, museums, galleries, associations, and other art world figures. The Archives also houses the largest collection of oral histories anywhere on the subject of art."
The Avalon Project
Contains digital documents relevant to the fields of Law, History, Economics, Politics, Diplomacy and Government from across the World and from a plethora of time periods.
Calisphere from University of California
A database of the digitized collections from California libraries, archives, and museums. With over 400,000 images, texts, and recordings, highlights from the collections include photographs and other primary sources on: Japanese American Internment, Chinese Exclusion Act, Dust Bowl Migration and more.
Documenting the American South: First Person Narratives of the American South
"Documenting the American South (DocSouth) includes sixteen thematic collections of primary sources for the study of southern history, literature, and culture."
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, music, images, TV news, and more.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Provides full-text and full-page-image access to a comprehensive range of English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, and ephemera. Primarily in English, but includes other languages.
Scope: Works published in the United Kingdom and its territories.
Dates: 1701 to 1800.
Famous Trials
Compiled by Douglas O. Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, this resource provides primary source and other materials concerning some of the 20th Century's key trials. Though not limited to the United States, the majority of cases listed are from the U.S.
The Freedom Archives: Digital Search
"The Freedom Archives contains over 12,000 hours of audio and video recordings which date from the late-1960s to the mid-90s and chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international movements. We are also in the process of scanning and uploading thousands of historical documents which enrich our media holdings. "
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
"The Gilder Lehrman Collection is a unique archive of primary sources in American history. Owned by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and located at the New-York Historical Society, the Collection includes more than 60,000 letters, diaries, maps, pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, photographs, and ephemera that document the political, social, and economic history of the United States. An extensive resource for educators, students, and scholars, the Collection ranges from 1493 through the twentieth century and is widely considered one of the nation’s great archives in the Revolutionary, early national, antebellum, and Civil War periods."
Historical Statistics of the United States This link opens in a new window
Quantitative facts of American history. Statistical tables covering population, work and welfare, economic structure and performance, economic sectors, and governance and international relations. The fully searchable and downloadable electronic edition permits users to graph individual tables and create customized tables and spreadsheets reflecting their own particular areas of interest.
Scope: United States.
Dates: 1700s-2000 (majority of tables falling between 1790-1990).
Letter From America by Alistair Cooke
Observations on topical issues in the United States from host British host Alistair Cooke, describing events taking place during the airing of the episode. The show ran from 1946-2004.
Massachusetts Historical Society
MA Historical has a vast array of digital collections, primarily centered on early colonial and American Revolution, abolitionist & antislavery movements, and also including some useful historical images and papers (including presidential papers).
National Archives: America's Historical Documents
"The National Archives preserves and provides access to the records of the Federal Government."
Nineteenth Century Masterfile: 1106-1930 This link opens in a new window
Provides access to primary resources for studies in Anglo-American literature published before 1930. Search across dozens of subject indexes to periodicals, newspapers, books, patents, US and UK government documents and more.
Scope: Great Britain, United States.
Dates: 1106 to 1930.
NYPL Digital Collections
Search through the over 800,000 digitized items from the New York Public Library’s collections, with prints, photographs, maps, manuscripts, streaming video, and more. Also has a feature in which public domain items have been enhanced and labelled so that they may be used in various ways.
World Digital Library: United States of America
"The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world." This is the section specifically dedicated to the U.S.A
History of Indigenous Peoples/Native Americans in the United States
Protocols for Native American Archival Materials
"In April 2006 a group of nineteen Native American and non-Native American archivists, librarians, museum curators, historians, and anthropologists gathered at Northern Arizona University Cline Library in Flagstaff, Arizona. The participants included representatives from fifteen Native American, First Nation, and Aboriginal communities. The group met to identify best professional practices for culturally responsive care and use of American Indian archival material held by non-tribal organizations. "
Indians/Native Americans resources from the National Archives: Archives Library Information Center (ALIC)
An extensive list of resources pertaining to Native American history in the United States. This includes resources such as census materials, treaties, records of different organizations, and digital collections.
Native American Historical Resources listed by the Henry G. Bennett Memorial Library
An extensive list of digital resources on the history of Native Americans. It includes many legal resources.
Native American History Resources listed by University of Washington Tacoma
An extensive list of primary source material pertaining to Native American history, there are even sections by specific region
After Columbus: Four-hundred Years of Native American Portraiture
Over 350 prints and drawings of Native Americans spanning 400 years from "an exhibition presented by the Library [NYPL] in 1994, Four Hundred Years of Native-American Portraits, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of the Americas. Offering a selective view of the history of Native American portraiture, drawn exclusively from the Library's collections, it reprised an earlier Library exhibition held in the then-new landmark building on Fifth Avenue in 1912. In that same year the last of the contiguous United States territories achieved statehood, a political act that symbolically and literally closed the "frontier" phase of United States history."
Carlisle Indian Industrial School Digital Resource Center
"The Carlisle Indian Industrial School is a major site of memory for many Native peoples, as well as a source of study for students and scholars around the globe. This website represents an effort to aid the research process by bringing together, in digital format, a variety of resources that are physically preserved in various locations around the country. Through these resources, we seek to increase knowledge and understanding of the school and its complex legacy, while also facilitating efforts to tell the stories of the many thousands of students who were sent there."
Edward S. Curstis's "The North American Indian"
"Edward Sheriff Curtis published The North American Indian between 1907 and 1930 with the intent to record traditional Indian cultures. The work comprises twenty volumes of narrative text and photogravure images. Each volume is accompanied by a portfolio of large photogravure plates." The work contains over 2000 photos documenting the life of individuals in 80 different tribes at the beginning of the 20th century.
Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties
This seven volume set was first published by the Government Printing Office in 1903 - 1904. It contains the US Government's treaties, laws, and orders from 1778 - 1970.
National Museum of the American Indian: Archives
Information on accessing collections from the National Museum of the American Indian and a link to the Smithsonian Collection Search Site where you can specify History & Culture to find digital resources on Native Americans and Indigenous Persons.
Native American Constitution and Law Digitization Project
This site contains tribal Constitutions, codes, and other legal documents from over 500 different tribes. It is a cooperative effort among the University of Oklahoma Law Center and the National Indian Law Library (NILL), and Native American tribes.
Samuel Proctor Oral History Program: Native Americans Oral History Collections
"The 'Native Americans Oral History Collections' is part of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program is an affiliated program of the University of Florida's Department of History. Its collections include approximately 4,000 interviews and more than 85,000 pages of transcribed material, making it the largest oral history archive in the South and one of the major collections in the country."
Asian Nation
Run by a scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, this site aims to serve as an "information resource and sociological exploration of the historical, demographic, political, and cultural issues that make up today's diverse Asian American community."
Asian/Pacific American Archives Survey Project
"The Asian/Pacific American Archives Survey Project was established in 2008 by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute and the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. It was the first systematic attempt to map existing and potential Asian/Pacific American (A/PA) archival collections in the New York metropolitan area. The project seeks to address the underrepresentation of East Coast Asian America in historic scholarship and archives by surveying the collections of community-based organizations and individuals. From 2008 to 2011, the Project surveyed over 90 archival collections and helped transfer some of them into the Fales Library & Special Collections and the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University." Note: This collection is not online.
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
"These primary sources 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."
Pioneering Punjabis Digital Archive
"This archive offers a window into the story of South Asian immigrants from the Punjab region in north India to California since the turn of the twentieth century. Explore over 700 video interviews, speeches, diaries, photographs, articles, and letters in which Punjabi Americans share their life stories, values, and contributions to California’s history over the last hundred and twenty years."
SEAAdoc: Documenting the Southeast Asian American Experience
"SEAAdoc is an educational resource of the Southeast Asian Archive at the UC Irvine Libraries focusing on post-1975 refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and the communities they have developed in the United States. It contains 1,500 visual images and 4,000 pages of searchable text selected from the Archive to represent a cross section of our holdings. SEAAdoc documents the exodus of Southeast Asian refugees and immigrants from their homelands, their experiences in Asian refugee camps, and subsequent resettlement in the United States."
The South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
"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. "
University of Southern California (USC) Digital Library
The USC Digital Library includes various collections of United States History. While there is an emphasis placed on California history, there are also various collections important to the study of Asian American History. This includes (but is not limited to) Japanese American Incarceration Images, 1941-1946, Taiwanese American Archives, Susan Hanley Photographs, 1956-1959, and Korean American Digital Archive. Go to Collections to find and select them all.
Welga Digital Archive & Repository
"The Welga Project Digital Archive and Repository focuses on preserving and presenting primary sources regarding the Filipino American activism, labor, and immigration history. The majority of the collection focuses on Filipino involvement in the Delano Grape Strikes and United Farm Worker history."
All of the guides below have pages for Primary Sources, please click on the link to be taken to the Primary Sources Page. Note: not all the sources will be specific to the United States.
Black Studies
Immigrants & Refugee Studies
Latin American and Latino/a History (page on this guide)
Gender and LGBTQ Studies
Women's History
See the Primary Sources page to gain a better understanding of what a primary source is.
Looking for Images or Newspapers? More options will be located under the Primary Sources page on this guide.
Librarian Tip: When searching for names of people and/or places be sure to include alternative spellings to capture all pertinent results. Additionally, if searching across multiple languages think about how different languages refer to the person, place, or thing and utilize all terms. 
