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HIST 366: The American Civil Rights Movement

Evaluating Websites

The internet has enabled anyone to 'publish' material and information. This makes it hazardous for researchers to find reliable information. Primary sources are prevalent on the web, and this makes the historian's work much more efficient, but it is often difficult to discern a web source's reliability. Good strategies for using the web for historical research are:

  • aim to get primary material rather than interpretations or essays about the material
  • favor materials produced or hosted by libraries or other cultural institutions, such as museums and historical societies
  • favor sites with primary material in its original form -- for instance a collection of letters with both the original documents and transcriptions -- and primary material that is relatively complete, not excerpted
  • look for the author(s) of a site and investigate the author(s) credentials
  • try to determine a site's purpose; for instance, a site may have a political bias, or a site may be directed at an elementary school audience

Strategies for Searching for Primary Sources Online

1. Look for People. Collections of an individual's papers may be online and freely available. Examples:

2. Look for organizations. An organization's papers may be partially or fully digitized. Examples:

3. Look for events. Examples:

4. If your project is focused on a particular city, search Google for the name of that city and use the phrase "civil rights". Example:

FBI COINTELPRO documents

 

A document collection from the U.S. FBI's program of surveillance known as COINTELPRO is at the FBI Vault site. The relevant collection is the Black Extremist groups papers. There are also a few documents in the White Hate Groups (e.g., KKK) files that might be relevant.

In addition, the microfilm of the COINTELPRO Papers focusing on the F.B.I.'s investigations into black nationalist hate groups is available on microfilm. Please see Laurie Sauer, or another library staff member if you need help using the microfilm. (Note: It is unclear if the web material exactly duplicates the microfilm collection.)

Some Good Online Sites

Here are some reputable internet sites with collections of material related to the Civil Rights Movement.