Library Guides: Migration and Immigration: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, originally from Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim and Judy Yung: Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, 2nd edition (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014).

Wild Geese Sorrow by Jeffrey Thomas Leong (Translator)
ISBN: 9781944593063
Publication Date: 2018-02-15
"Wild Geese Sorrow renders full the story of Chinese immigrants detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station between 1910-1940. Based upon new translations of the mostly anonymous poems carved into the men's barracks walls, these words express the deep anger, sorrow, and loneliness felt by the detainees, and are a powerful testament to human resiliency and perseverance everywhere."-

Primary Sources for Immigration and Migration Studies

American Politics and Society This link opens in a new window
American Politics and Society consists of a wide range of 19th and 20th century material.
Going in chronological order, the first module in this category are the papers of one of the most prolific inventors in American History, Thomas A. Edison Papers. The other modules in this category consist of immigration records to the United States during the massive immigration wave from 1880-1930; legal collections from the Harvard Law School Library featuring the papers of three Supreme Court Justices, the first Black federal judge, and one of the most infamous criminal cases of the 20th century; papers of the Progressive leader Robert M. La Follette; records from the Franklin D. Roosevelt White House and other federal agencies on the New Deal and World War II; FBI Files on radical politics; records of the Truman and Eisenhower Presidencies; records of Students for a Democratic Society, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and other anti-Vietnam War organizations; and records on American Politics from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the Nixon Administration.
Music Online: American Music This link opens in a new window
Hear and feel the music from America's past. The database includes songs by and about Native Americans, miners, immigrants, enslaved people, children, pioneers, and cowboys. Included in the database are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and anti-war protests.
Formerly known as African American Song, or American Song. Part of Alexander Street Press's Music Online.
Ancestry Library This link opens in a new window
Access to this resource will be discontinued effective 06/30/24 due to library budget cuts. Please use Family Search as an alternative resource. "Includes approximately 4,000 databases including the U.S. Federal Census images & indexes from 1790 to 1940; historical maps; vital statistic records, military records, immigration records, Federal Slave Narratives, and much more."
Ancestry Library Edition provides almost all of the document reproductions and functionality available in the personal-subscription Ancestry.com product. However, some Ancestry.com materials are absent from Ancestry Library Edition, including e-books from the Families and Local Histories Collection, city directories, and historical newspapers.
Border and Migration Studies Online This link opens in a new window
Border and Migration Studies Online is a collection that explores and provides historical background on more than thirty key worldwide border areas, including: U.S. and Mexico; the European Union; and others.
Featuring at completion 100,000 pages of text, 175 hours of video, and 1,000 images, the collection is organized around fundamental themes associated with border and migration issues.
Homeland Security Digital Library (HSDL) This link opens in a new window
Provides quick access to more than 131,000 open-source resources related to homeland security policy, including U.S. policy documents, presidential directives, and national strategy documents, as well as specialized resources such as theses and reports from various universities, organizations and local and state agencies.
Includes over 30,000 records for locally held and linked documents on homeland security strategy, policy and research published by international, federal, state and local government agencies as well as research institutions, universities and think tanks. Subject areas include borders and immigration, infrastructure protection, emergency management, terrorism, and more.
Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees: The West’s Response to Jewish Emigration This link opens in a new window
The records of the IGCR, which was organized in 1938 to facilitate Jewish emigration from Germany, but which largely failed. [1938-1947]
Includes the full records of State Department Lot File 52D408 from Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State, Records of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees.
Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 This link opens in a new window
A rich variety of original manuscript collections from the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. [1654-1954]
The material is based on a rich variety of original manuscript collections from the unique holdings of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. It provides access to twenty-four collections of personal papers and six major organizational collections, including: Papers of the Industrial Removal Office (1899-1922), Papers of the Jewish Immigration Information Bureau (1901-1920), Records relating to the American Jewish Historical Exhibition (1901-1902), Papers relating to the American Jewish Tercentenary in 1954 (1949-1956), Records of the Baron de Hirsch Fund (1819-1991), and Records of the Board Delegates of American Israelites (1859-1881).
National Farm Worker Ministry: Mobilizing Support for Migrant Workers, 1939-1985 This link opens in a new window
This collection reproduces correspondence, reports, speeches, minutes and other materials relating to the farm workers, poverty programs, Public Law 78, Braceros, labor camps, the United Farm Workers Union and the Delano Grape Strike. [1965-1980]
North American Women's Letters and Diaries This link opens in a new window
Browse by Subjects (such as Immigration)
Include approximately 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries by more than 1000 women. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions. Also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
2,900 life histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, and more
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
"From 1910 to 1940, Angel Island was the site of an U.S. Immigration Station that functioned as the West Coast equivalent of Ellis Island, although the Angel Island facility also enforced policies designed to exclude many Pacific Coast immigrants coming from eighty countries."
"In 1970, the site was slated for demolition because of its deteriorated condition; but the discovery of Chinese poetry that had been carved into the walls of the detention barracks saved it from destruction and led to renewed interest in the Angel Island Immigration Station. Most importantly, the discovery of poetry increased awareness of the need to access the vivid lessons of sacrifice and triumph in the history of immigration."
Calisphere: exhibitions
Calisphere is your gateway to California’s remarkable digital collections. Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover over one million 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.
Digital Public Library of America: Migration
Discover 40,130,032 images, texts, videos, and sounds from major digital collections across the United States.
Digital Vaults on Docs Teach
Collections of digitized documents from the National Archives, grouped thematically and searchable.
Digitizing Immigrant Letters
The Digitizing Immigrant Letters Project aims to make available on-line letters from the IHRC Archives and other collections (private individuals, partner institutions) that were written between 1850 and 1970 both by immigrants (the so-called “America letters”) and to immigrants (“homeland letters”).
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The project aims to make available on-line letters from the IHRC Archives and other collections (private individuals, partner institutions) that were written between 1850 and 1970 both by immigrants (the so-called “America letters”) and to immigrants (“homeland letters”).
Ellis Island
"From 1892 to 1924, Ellis Island was America's largest and most active immigration station, where over 12 million immigrants were processed. On average, the inspection process took approximately 3-7 hours. For the vast majority of immigrants, Ellis Island truly was an "Island of Hope" - the first stop on their way to new opportunities and experiences in America. For the rest, it became the "Island of Tears" - a place where families were separated and individuals were denied entry into the United States."
Great Depression Interviews
Videos and transcripts of interviews gathered for program The Great Depression.
Hmong Oral History Project
The Hmong Oral History Project works to connect the younger generations of Hmong, and the broader communities in which many Hmong live, with resources describing Hmong culture in Laos, the Secret War in Southeast Asia, and stories of the Hmong immigrant experience, facilitating greater intercultural and intergenerational understanding.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
This digital collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the start of the Great Depression.
Minnesota Immigrant Oral Histories
A collection of over 360 oral history interviews conducted between 1967 and 2012 with recent immigrants to Minnesota and their American-born children
Nebraska Western Trails
Includes artifacts, books, documents, maps, postcards, original paintings, and photographs on a variety of topics relating to trails in Nebraska.
South Asian American Digital Archive
Documents the South Asian diaspora experience in the United States; includes photographs, correspondence and more
Trails of Hope: Overland Diaries and Letters, 1846-1869
Collection of the original writings of 49 voyagers on the Mormon, California, Oregon, and Montana trails who wrote while traveling on the trail.

19th Century U.S. Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers. (Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers)
For each issue, the newspaper is captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement and illustration.
African American Historical Newspapers (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
African American Historical Newspapers provides researchers with unprecedented access to perspectives and information that was excluded or marginalized in mainstream sources. Use this link to search across a range of newspapers significant to African American history.
Access includes: Atlanta Daily World‎ (1931 - 2010), The Baltimore Afro-American‎ (1893 - 2010), Chicago Defender‎ (1909 - 2010), Cleveland Call and Post (1934 - 2010), Los Angeles Sentinel‎ (1934 - 2010), Louisville Defender (1951 - 2010), Michigan Chronicle (1939 - 2010), New York Amsterdam News‎ (1922 - 2010), Norfolk Journal and Guide‎ (1916 - 2010), The Philadelphia Tribune (1912 - 2010), (Pittsburgh Courier‎ (1911 - 2010) .
African American Newspapers, Series I (1827-1998) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 280 African American newspapers from around the country.
This collection includes historically significant African American Newspapers from more than 35 states and features many rare 19th-century titles. Also includes several California titles like the Los Angeles Tribune (1943-1960), Oakland Sunshine (1915-1922), and Western Outlook (1914-1928), and the Elevator (1865-1898).
C19: The Nineteenth Century Index This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive coverage of nineteenth-century books, periodicals, official documents, newspapers and archives. (19th Century Index) [1800 - 1899]
C19 Index draws on the Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue, The Wellesley Index, Poole's Index and Periodicals Index Online to create integrated bibliographic coverage of over 1.4 million books and official publications, 64,891 archival collections and 15.6 million articles published in over 2,500 journals, magazines and newspapers.
California Digital Newspaper Collection This link opens in a new window
Users will need to create a free account in order to download PDFs. Contains significant historical California newspapers published from 1846-1922. [1849 - 1911]
Offers over 400,000 pages of California newspapers spanning the years 1849-1911: the Alta California, 1849-1891; the San Francisco Call, 1893-1910; the Amador Ledger, 1900-1911; the Imperial Valley Press, 1901-1911; the Sacramento Record-Union, 1859-1890; and the Los Angeles Herald, 1905-1907. Additional years are forthcoming, as are other early California newspapers: the Californian; the California Star; the California Star and Californian; the Sacramento Transcript; the Placer Times; and the Pacific Rural Press.
Chronicling America This link opens in a new window
Search America's historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
To date, over 200,000 pages of California newspapers have been digitized. Chronicling America is sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).
Japanese American Relocation Camp Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Searchable full text database of 25 newspapers written and produced by Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
"Although subject to censorship the newspapers document the day to day life of the internees. Titles includes: Rohwer Outpost, Poston Chronicle, Gila News Courier, Tulean Dispatch, Granada Pioneer, Minndoka Irrigator, Topaz Times, Manzanar Free Press, Denson Tribune, and Heart Mountain Sentinel. (1942-1945)"
Jewish Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger‎ (1857 - 1922), The American Israelite‎ (1854 - 2000), The Jewish Advocate‎ (1905 - 1990), The Jewish Exponent‎ (1887 - 1990)
San Francisco Chronicle Archive, Complete (historical and current) This link opens in a new window
Two searchable databases comprising the complete San Francisco Chronicle, Northern California's largest circulation newspaper. 1865-1984, page images from the print edition. 1985 onward, full-text from the electronic edition, lacking graphics.

Immigrations, Migrations and Refugees: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996
Translated and English-language radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, periodicals, government documents and books providing global insight on immigration in the mid-to-late 20th century.

Browse the UCB Library's News databases (both current and historical)

Search UC Library Search , the library catalog for both Berkeley and the wider UC system: by keywords or official subject headings. To find official subject headings:

Search by keywords, display the long form of the record for an appropriate item, and then click on one of the subject headings that are listed
See Books tab of this guide for suggestions.
or, ask a librarian for assistance.

You may also pair an appropriate subject heading with additional subject terms that identify materials as primary sources. Some of these terms are:

correspondence
diaries
early works to 1800
interviews
pamphlets
periodicals
personal narratives
sources

Note: these subject terms will not retrieve all possible primary sources but they are a good way to start.

Examples:

mexican american agricultural laborers biography
refugees sudan darfur interviews

To find more results, redo the search as a keyword search.

For more guidance, see the UCB Library research guide to Finding Historical Primary Sources.

Secondary menu

Migration and Immigration

Primary Sources

Primary Sources for Immigration and Migration Studies