“The Voice of Industry” website features 142 full issues produced between May 29, 1845-August 3, 1848.

The Voice of Industry was a worker-run newspaper published by young American women, who came to work in the factories at the height of the Industrial Revolution. It was printed in Lowell, Mass., the site of some of the largest protests against the new, profit-driven economic system which we today call “capitalism.” In the 1840s, these protests were concerned mainly with the dramatic loss of independence felt by workers, as they were made to sell their labor for a wage. While the Voice was primarily concerned with this dramatic social change, the paper also addressed itself to a range of social issues, including slavery, capital punishment, and war.

Shortly after it was established, the Voice became the herald of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, the first union of working women in America. Under the influence of the young labor leader Sarah Bagley, the Association’s first president, the paper was an uncompromising advocate for women’s rights, publishing pieces about marriage, suffrage, and equality.

This website features articles and poetry from the Voice of Industry, and digital copies of the original issues. It was assembled and produced by Rajeev Ruparell who found the Voice while he was a student in Boston. Impressed with the paper, he spent several months digitizing and re-typing much of the content, which was necessary due to the poor condition of the original. Ruparell has worked as a lawyer and is currently working on a number of non-profit projects in Toronto.

Pullquotes from Newspaper

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Last Seen is an archive of thousands of “Information Wanted” advertisements taken out by people freed from slavery who are searching for family members. Their families were separated by the cruel and criminal institution of slavery which tore generations of families apart for close to three centuries.

The ads taken out in Black newspapers mention family members, often by name, and also by physical description, last seen locations, and at times by the name of a former slave master.

The archive, maintained by graduate students at Villanova University, can be a powerful tool in the classroom to tell stories of forced separation and survival during slavery, emancipation, and Civil War.

A few examples:

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This act of civil disobedience intensified protest against the draft, prompted debate in households in Maryland and across the nation, and stirred angry reaction on the part of many Americans. It also propelled the nine Catholic participants — especially priest brothers Daniel and Philip Berrigan — into the national spotlight.

The Catonsville action reflected not only the nature of the Vietnam antiwar movement in 1968, but also the larger context of social forces that were reshaping American culture in the 1960s. [Website description.]

Rethinking Schools wrote,

In one important action, in 1968, Father Daniel Berrigan joined with eight others to remove 378 files from the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland. In a gesture rich with symbolism, the activists burned the files with homemade napalm. In his Catonsville meditation, Berrigan wrote: “Our apologies, dear friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children.” The story of this resistance to the war in Vietnam and the trial of the Catonsville Nine is told through documents, photos, and audio and video accounts at Fire and Faith: The Catonsville Nine File. A fine resource for teaching about the war in Vietnam and those who resisted.

Tribute Song

Listen to “Catonsville Nine (War No More)” on SoundCloud. Music composed by Joe DeFilippo and performed by the R. J. Phillips Band, a group of Baltimore musicians. Spoken intro: Prayer of Daniel Berrigan.

Film Trailer

Hit & Stay: A History of Faith and Resistance portrays the hidden history of the Action Community and the raids they staged that turned priests, nuns, and college students into fugitives and targets of the FBI.

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Mamie King-Chalmers.

But there are thousands of other names, those of the people who were young enough to be in school yet old enough to recognize that we were witnesses to historic events.

Kids in Birmingham 1963 offers a rich collection of first-person accounts by people who were children or youth in Birmingham in 1963. [Description from website.]

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With his Tribune colleagues and a dynamic community of free and freed persons of African descent, Roudanez courageously attacked racism in the face of some of the nation’s worst violence. He was the guiding force behind one of the most radical and influential journals of its time. The Tribune’s crusade led to Black enfranchisement, the creation of a groundbreaking State constitution with strong equal rights provisions, and the election of many Black representatives. The vision of Roudanez, articulated in print and manifested in social protest, forged one of the most important civil rights campaigns in U.S. history.

Visit the website to explore the history of the New Orleans Tribune which features an in-depth history of the Tribune, a virtual tour of historic sites, articles about the importance of the paper, extracts, a timeline of significant events in the Tribune’s past, and a video and photo gallery. [Website description.]

This website was developed and is maintained by Mark Charles Roudané, retired elementary school teacher and great-great-grandson of Charles Roudanez. We highly recommend Roudane’s October, 2015 article in The Atlantic, “Grappling With the Memory of New Orleans: A family’s story traces the roots of the eclectic city, the country’s first black daily newspaper, and the evolution of racial injustice.”

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The SNCC Digital Gateway website focuses on Southwest Georgia, Mississippi, and the Alabama Black Belt as three geographic locations that were central to SNCC’s voting rights organizing.

Classroom Stories

The SNCC Digital Gateway is a kaleidoscopic resource for students and teachers! The website is not only easy to navigate, but it offers a rich introduction (or reintroduction) to the people, places, and events led by SNCC — the only national civil rights organization led by youth. Plus, the website also serves as a repository for other resources related to the Civil Rights Movement.

—Jessica Rucker

High School U.S. History Teacher, Washington, District of Columbia

I want to express appreciation for the incredible gift that is the SNCC Digital Gateway. The depth, range of perspectives, and wisdom that are available and accessible to the people who most need to see and hear it — our students — are incredible.

As a middle school teacher, I’ve taught about the movement for more than 20 years now and there is nothing like the energy that comes into a class when students become aware that other young people not only might make change someday, but can make change right now. And there is no substitute for the voices of people who have lived that.

Thank you for carrying this vital organizing truth forward.

—Dean Spencer

Middle School Social Studies Teacher, Belmont, Massachusetts

Read more of what teachers say about the SNCC Digital Gateway website.

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Website features:

• Maps
• Information on confinement sites
• Timeline
• Resources

The collection is comprised of daily journals, field reports, life histories, and secondary research materials collected and compiled by the research staff. There is also extensive correspondence between staff, evacuees, and others. [Website description.]

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From left: Lawrence Guyot, Ruby Sales, Pete Seeger, Kathleen Cleaver, Junius Williams

The Library of Congress has launched an online collection of oral history interviews with Civil Rights Movement veterans. The interviews were collected and compiled under the Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). It was a collaborative effort of the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).

As is explained on the Library of Congress website, “The activists interviewed for this project belong to a wide range of occupations, including lawyers, judges, doctors, farmers, journalists, professors, and musicians, among others. The video recordings of their recollections cover a wide variety of topics within the civil rights movement, such as the influence of the labor movement, nonviolence and self-defense, religious faith, music, and the experiences of young activists. Actions and events discussed in the interviews include the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), the Albany Movement (1961), the Freedom Rides (1961), the Selma to Montgomery Rights March (1965), the Orangeburg Massacre (1968), sit-ins, voter registration drives in the South, and the murder of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955, a horrific event that galvanized many young people into joining the freedom movement.

“Many interviewees were active in national organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Other interviewees were key members of specialized and local groups including the Medical Committee for Human Rights, the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the Cambridge (Maryland) Nonviolent Action Committee, and the Newark Community Union Project. Several interviews include men and women who were on the front lines of the struggle in places not well-known for their civil rights movement activity such as Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Saint Augustine, Florida; and Bogalusa, Louisiana.”

Visit the Civil Rights History Project to see the interviews and learn more.

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Lincoln vets in the 1946 NY May Day Parade.

As William L. Katz explains in The Lincoln Brigade: A Picture History,

Most Lincolns were activists and idealists who had worked with and demonstrated for the homeless and unemployed during the Great Depression. They were poets and blue-collar workers, professors and students, seamen and journalists, lawyers and painters, Christians and Jews, Blacks and whites. The Brigade was the first fully integrated United States army, and Oliver Law, an African American from Texas, was an early Lincoln commander.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to providing resources and programs on the history and legacy of the Brigades.

The programs include teacher institutes, exhibitions, publications, cultural programs and an annual award for human rights activism, given in partnership with the Puffin Foundation.

Drawing on the ALBA archival collections in New York University’s Tamiment Library, ALBA works to preserve the legacy of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as an inspiration for present and future generations.

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With the advent of newspapers in the American colonies, enslavers posted “runaway ads” to try to locate fugitives. Additionally, jailers posted ads describing people they had apprehended in search of the enslavers who claimed the fugitives as property.

Created to control the movement of enslaved people, the ads ultimately preserved the details of individual lives — their personality, appearance, and life story. Taken collectively, the ads constitute a detailed, concise, and rare source of information about the experiences of enslaved people.

Freedom on the Move will serve as a research aid, a pedagogical tool, and a resource for genealogists. Scholars, students, and citizen historians will be able to use the data produced from the ads in new and creative ways.

Many of the primary source digitized ads are not yet transcribed. The public, including students, are invited to participate in the Freedom on the Move project by typing up the text advertisements at the website and completing data entry on its platform.

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