Locating Primary Sources

Primary sources are materials that contain firsthand accounts of events and were created at the time of the event or recalled later by an eyewitness. Materials may be in the form of newspapers and magazines, letters and diaries, photographs, video recordings, oral histories and transcripts, or government records.

Some resources on the the early participation of African American women in the armed forces and various early war efforts can be found in digital repositories on the internet. Below are a select number of resources that are available as well as some databases, archives, or digital collections that can be used to find resources.

Newspapers and Visual Material Collections

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
This link will search "Negro WACS" in the Chronicling America system -- you can then use the drop-down search limit on the left to filter the results by state.
NAACP photographs of African American women in the military services during World War II
Emphasis is on activities of the Army Nurse Corps and the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), later called Women's Army Corps (WAC), at bases in Australia, England, France, and the United States. Activities include training, recruitment, clerical work, and recreation, such as Army nurses playing cards and knitting, and a WAAC band in a parade. Includes portraits of officers and new recruits. Prominent people depicted include: Mary McLeod Bethune at a National Civilian Advisory Committee luncheon, Fort Des Moines, Iowa; Joe Louis welcoming a group of new WAAC enlistees; Walter White visiting the WAAC training center at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. One photo of tennis instructor of the 3510 WAF Squadron, Randolph Air Force Base.
Pictures of African Americans During World War II (National Archives and Records Administration)
Select "Women in the Military" from the topics.
This collection shows photographs of African Americans photographs from the holdings of the Still Picture Branch (NNSP) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Barbara Lewis Burger (NARA) researched, selected, and arranged the items for this list and wrote the introductory information. The images described in this leaflet illustrate African-American participation in World War II. The pictures were selected from the holdings of the Still Picture Branch (NNSP) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The majority of the pictures were chosen from the records of the Army Signal Corps in Record Group (RG) 111, the Department of the Navy in RG 80, the Coast Guard in RG 26, the Marine Corps in RG 127, and the Office of War Information in RG 208.See also Burger's description of the work in "The Lion's History: Researching Images of World War II African Americans," Prologue: the Journal of the National Archives, v. 29 1997, p. 148-153.
Women Veterans Historical Project (University of North Carolina at Greensboro) External
The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project (WVHP), established at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 1998, documents the contributions of women in the military and related service organizations since World War I. The WVHP includes a wide range of source material including photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, oral histories, military patches and insignia, uniforms, and posters, as well as published works.

Subscription Databases

The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.

Some databases, archives and collections for finding further primary sources, include the following:

Black Thought and Culture External This link opens in a new window
Provides approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to 1975. The collection, which also includes biographic details, is designed for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art. Material begins with the works of Frederick Douglass and is targeted to include (pending rights) the works of W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Alain Locke, Mary McLeod Bethune, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Ralph Bunche, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Houston Baker, Jesse Jackson, Ida B. Wells, Bobby Seale, and many others. Black Thought and Culture presents a wide range of previously inaccessible material, including letters by athletes such as Jackie Robinson, prefatory essays by Amiri Baraka, political leaflets by Huey Newton, and interviews with Rosa Parks.
Discovering American Women's History Online External This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s. The database offers the following features:
- Detailed descriptions and links to more than 600 digital collections
- Quick access to basic and advanced searches on every page
- Options for browsing by subject (300+ entries), place, time period, and primary source type
- Options for narrowing search results by subject, time period, place, and primary source type.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries, Colonial to 1950 External This link opens in a new window
Full-text of diaries, journals, and letters written by 632 women visiting or living in North America. Drawn from several hundred sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings, much of the material is in copyright. Represented are all age groups and life stages, all ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous. Numerous biographies are also contained in the database, which is scheduled to include approximately 150,000 pages of published letters and diaries from individuals writing from Colonial times to 1950, plus 7,000 pages of previously unpublished materials, when completed. Updated quarterly.

Resources from Google Books

Magazines from Google Books
Hundreds of digitized magazines from the 20th and 21st centuries. Includes The Crisis, Life Magazine, Black World/Negro Digest, and Ebony among others.
Newspapers from Google Books
Use Google's Advanced Book Search to limit to and search in newspaper content from newspapers of the time.

African American Women in the Military and at War

Science & Technical Reports: Ask a Librarian

Locating Primary Sources

Newspapers and Visual Material Collections

Subscription Databases

Resources from Google Books