Digital Collections
A list of digital collections of primary source materials related to Comparative Ethnic Studies. Topics include archives relevant to Black, Indigenous and communities of color as well as social justice movements. Lists are organized alphabetically with sections focusing on archives at UC Berkeley and the Bay Area as well as nationally.
This link opens in a new windowArchive of Immigrant Voices, University of Maryland, College Park
In 2012, the Center for the History of the New America (now the Center for Global Migration Studies) 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. These stories will provide the basis for understanding how newcomers adapt to challenges and successes. The Archive unites the Center's mission to advance scholarship and teaching while enhancing the Center's connection to migrant communities by capturing, recording, and preserving the experience of migration, dislocation, and community formation as immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, and other newcomers themselves understood it. In addition to housing these oral interviews, the Archive also contains further information on the history of immigration, educator resources, and tools for conducting oral histories.
The Berkeley Revolution Digital Archive
This website is a collective project, one which emerged from an honors undergraduate seminar in American Studies at UC-Berkeley, “The Bay Area in the Seventies,” taught by Scott Saul in the spring of 2017. The eleven students in that seminar shaped their own research projects, burrowing into archives official and unofficial so as to recover the stories missing from, or hidden within, standard accounts of Berkeley’s history. This curated archive—with 300 documents organized across their six main projects—is the result.
Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project
Densho is a Japanese term meaning “to pass on to the next generation,” or to leave a legacy. The legacy we offer is an American story with ongoing relevance: during World War II, the United States government incarcerated innocent people solely because of their ancestry.
Densho is a nonprofit organization started in 1996, with the initial goal of documenting oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. This evolved into a mission to educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity. Densho uses digital technology to preserve and make accessible primary source materials on the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. We present these materials and related resources for their historic value and as a means of exploring issues of democracy, intolerance, wartime hysteria, civil rights and the responsibilities of citizenship in our increasingly global society.
The Documented Border: An Open Access Digital Archive
The Documented Border: An Open Access Digital Archive is an interdisciplinary effort whose goal is to advance understanding and awareness about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and its peoples during a period of unprecedented societal change. The innovative archive focuses on untold and silenced stories and events about this transnational region.
FoundSF: San Francisco's Digital Archive
FoundSF is a wiki that invites history buffs, community leaders, and San Francisco citizens of all kinds to share their unique stories, images, and videos from past and present. There are over 1,800 articles here presenting primary sources, essays, and images from history.
Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment, including:
Korean American Digital Archive, University of Southern California
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.
Mapping Prejudice Project, University of Minnesota
Mapping Prejudice identifies and maps racial covenants, clauses that were inserted into property deeds to keep people who were not White from buying or occupying homes. From our base in the University of Minnesota Libraries, our interdisciplinary team collaborates with community members to expose the history of structural racism and support the work of reparations.
Occupy Archive, Case Western Reserve University
The Occupy Archive is a collection of digitized Occupy Movement materials and ephemera collected from 2011-2018.
Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, University of Washington
This multi-media web site brings the vital history of Seattle's civil rights movements to life with scores of video oral histories, hundreds of rare photographs, documents, movement histories, and personal biographies, more than 300 pages in all. Based at the University of Washington, the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project is a collaboration between community groups and UW faculty and students.
South Asian American Digital Archive
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.
Welga Project Digital Archive and Repository, University of California, Davis
The Welga Project Digital Archive and Repository focuses on preserving and presenting primary sources regarding the Filipino American Labor and Activism History. Currently, most our collections focus on mid-20th century labor history. From 2017 forward, we are committed to expanding our collection to include the broad topic of Filipino American activism and labor history.