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From the moment he entered the United States in 1933, Albert Einstein was under constant surveillance by the FBI, which was alarmed by his advocacy of peace through world government and his support for Zionism. This file chronicles the daily activities and findings of agents assigned to Einstein over the years.
George H. W. Bush and Foreign Affairs: The Moscow Summit and the Dissolution of the USSR
When George H. W. Bush became president in 1989 the United States had already begun to see a thawing of relations with the Soviet Union. President Bush spoke of softening relations in his inaugural address, claiming that "a new breeze is blowing," and adding that "great nations of the world are moving toward democracy through the door to freedom." This collection provides an in-depth analysis of the events leading up to the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and its implications for U.S.-Soviet relations. The collection consists of three FOIA files from the Bush Library. The first file contains material related to the Moscow summit and the coup in August 1991 against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. This file contains cables sent to the White House situation room concerning day-by-day developments, and conversations between President Bush and other foreign leaders. The second file, which concerns the dissolution of the Soviet Union, highlights the Bush administration’s response to the dissolution and the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Documents here concern economic and humanitarian support, diplomatic recognition of the republics, aiding the transition to democratic governments and market economies, and defense issues, particularly the fate and control over the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. The last FOIA file contains materials on the meeting between President Bush and President Mikhail Gorbachev in Malta (December 2–3, 1989) and the subsequent meetings between President Bush and NATO leaders in Brussels (December 3– 4, 1989).
Records of the U.S. Information Service in China: Chinese Press Reviews and Summaries, 1944-1950
This U.S. Information Service collection is a compilation of the Chinese press and translations of radio broadcasts from the the Civil War period, which provides a unique opportunity to understand immediate post-World War II Chinese history, comparative revolution, and early Cold War history. The combination of smaller press collections weave together the strands of military, social, political, and free world history, and includes an analysis of how the Chinese Communist Party achieved victory in the Chinese civil war of 1946-1950.
FBI File: Hollywood and J. Edgar Hoover: Investigations of Actors and Directors
J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972), the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, held longstanding interest in the Hollywood film industry as well as deep distrust of anyone on the political left. In August 1942 he ordered the bureau’s Los Angeles office to report on Communist activities of various motion picture personalities, including actors, directors, producers, and writers. The FBI's investigation of Hollywood revealed a growing operation organized in the early 1940s, and after the Second World War the investigation evolved into a sophisticated operation. Between 1944 and 1954 agents conducted extensive surveillance of suspected Communists, “left-wingers,” and “fellow travelers,” and assembled information used by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in an effort to purge Hollywood of Communist influence. This publication contains reporting from informers, such as Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild; data on influential figures; and FBI "reviews" of mainstream films that were believed to contain Communist propaganda. Documentation includes: FBI surveillance and informant reports; Justice Department and FBI memoranda, correspondence, and analyses; news clippings and articles; excerpts from HUAC hearings; briefing papers; speech excerpts; and transcripts of conversations. Subjects include: Lucille Ball; Humphrey Bogart; Bertolt Brecht; James Cagney; Charles Chaplin; Jules Dassin; Walt Disney; Howard Fast; Lillian Hellman; Danny Kaye; Gene Kelley; Peter Lorre; Groucho Marx; Vincent Prince; Edward G. Robinson; James Stewart; Gloria Swanson; and others. This collection comprises the FOIA files related to a variety of subjects under FBI surveillance due to their alleged Communist or “fellow traveler” activities. It does not include the files related to the Hollywood Ten.
World War II Naval Histories and Historical Reports: Intelligence Division, OPNAV, Combat Narratives
These twenty-six narratives were designed to provide commissioned naval officers with interim summaries of actions prior to the availability of official histories. As such, these narratives are more polished historical accounts than were recorded in the original battle experiences reports. Drawn from action reports, operation orders, war diaries, and personal interviews, the documents contain charts and photographs. Although most of the reports describe action in the Pacific theater, the North African landings, the Sicilian campaign, and the Salerno landings are also the subjects of separate narratives.
Morocco: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1797-1929
This archive reveals more than a century of U.S.-Morocco relations and includes, among various documents, correspondences from U.S. ministers in Tangier and Tetuan. It is sourced from the Central Files of the General Records of the Department of State. The records are under the jurisdiction of the Legislative and Diplomatic Branch of the Civil Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Nuremberg Laws and Nazi Annulment of German Jewish Nationality
This collection consists of index cards listing the name, date and place of birth, occupation and last address of Jews whose German citizenship was revoked in accordance with the "Nuremberg Laws" of 1935, including Jews from Germany, Austria and Czech Bohemia. The cards are generally in alphabetical order. Suffix names "Israel" for men and "Sara" for women were added by law in 1936 to readily identify persons of Jewish descent.
The records in this collection relate to political relations between China and Japan for the period 1930 -1939. The records are mostly instructions to and despatches from diplomatic and consular officials; the despatches are often accompanied by enclosures. Also included in these records are notes between the Department of State and foreign diplomatic representatives in the United States, and memorandums prepared by officials of the Department. There are records on: the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, beginning with the Mukden incident in 1931; military action at Shanghai in 1932; further Japanese political and economic penetration into China, 1935-1936; and the course of the undeclared war between Japan and China, 1937-1939.
Women's Issues and Their Advocacy Within the White House, 1974-1977
This collection documents Patricia Lindh’s and Jeanne Holm’s liaison with women’s groups, and their advocacy within the White House on issues of special interest to women. Includes material accumulated by presidential Counselor Anne Armstrong, and Office of Women’s Programs Director Karen Keesling. Topics include: liaison activities with over 300 women’s organizations, agency women’s groups and program units; advisory committees on women and women appointees; public policy; and legislation and regulation of women’s civil rights in the government and the economy.
Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees: The West's Response to Jewish Emigration
The Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) was organized in London in August 1938 as a result of the Evian Conference of July 1938, which had been called by President Roosevelt to consider the problem of racial, religious, and political refugees from central Europe. This collection comprises, in its entirety, the Primary Source Media microfilm collection entitled Records of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 1938-1947.
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
These files document an important moment in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. The United States Supreme Court's decision in Boynton v. Virginia granted interstate travelers the legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances [i.e. outlawed racial segregation] in relation to interstate transportation restaurants and waiting rooms in terminals. Five years prior to the Boynton ruling, the Interstate Commerce Commission had issued a ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company that had explicitly denounced the Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine of separate but equal in interstate bus travel. However, the ICC had failed to enforce its own ruling, and thus Jim Crow travel laws remained in force throughout the South. The Freedom Riders set out to challenge this status quo by riding various forms of public transportation in the South to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement and called national attention to the violent disregard for the law that was used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Riders were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other alleged offenses. The first Freedom Ride began on May 5, 1961. Led by CORE Director James Farmer, 13 riders (seven black, six white) left Washington, D.C., on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending with a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana. Only minor trouble was encountered in Virginia and North Carolina, but some of the Riders were arrested in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Winnsboro, South Carolina. Mob violence in Birmingham, Alabama would attempt to end this first Freedom Ride.
War on Poverty: Office of Civil Rights, 1965-1968
The Great Society was a set of domestic programs proposed or enacted on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. Johnson launched an "unconditional war on poverty" in the first months of his presidency with the goal of eliminating hunger and deprivation from American life. The centerpiece of the War on Poverty was the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to oversee a variety of community-based antipoverty programs. The OEO reflected a fragile consensus among policymakers that the best way to deal with poverty was not simply to raise the incomes of the poor but to help them better themselves through education, job training, and community development. Historians have suggested that the most important domestic achievement of the Great Society may have been its success in translating some of the demands of the civil rights movement into law. The collection contains correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes of meetings, convention programs, and other records concerning the activities of Maurice Dawkins, Assistant Director for Civil Rights in the Office of Economic Opportunity. Reports, assessments, and background documents also include: Justice Department Task Force on Civil Rights, 1968; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Report on Ghettoes, 1967; Poor People’s Campaign and OEO, 1968; civil rights and the anti-poverty war; application of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Equal Employment Opportunities and the U.S. Civil Service Commission; OEO reports on Job Corps centers; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearings in Montgomery, Ala., for 1968; and 1967 Booz-Allen & Hamilton report on statewide education study in Mississippi. Files contain information regarding civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr; Roy Wilkins; Whitney Young; and Andrew Young. This publication consists of documents comprising RG 381, Records of the Community Services Administration, Records of the Office of Civil Rights, Program Records of the Assistant Director for Civil Rights, November 1965-December 1968, MLR Entry 1005. All documents were originally filmed in their entirety.
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations, 1910-1949
This archive reproduces microfilm of the U.S. Department of State Decimal Files 611.94 and 6194.11. The documents trace the commercial relations between the United States and Japan over the course of almost half a century in the years 1910-1929, 1930-1939, 1940-1944, and 1945-1949. The files are predominantly instructions to -- and dispatches from -- diplomatic and consular officials. Notes between the Department of State and foreign diplomats in the United States; memoranda prepared by State Department officials; and correspondence with officials of other government departments, private businesses, and persons are also featured. Subjects include: advertising, aircraft, commerce, customs administration, drug regulations, duties, embargo, free ports, landing certificates, law, markets, merchandise, prison made goods, pure food and drug regulations, smuggling, tariff treaties, export and import trade, undervaluation of imported merchandise, among many other topics.
Electing the President: Proceedings of the Republican National Conventions, 1856-1988
The collection includes the proceedings for 1856-1988 of the Republican National Conventions, providing gavel to gavel coverage of the conventions, including speeches, debates, votes, and party platforms. Also included are lists of names of convention delegates and alternates. Records of the earliest proceedings are based in part on contemporary newspaper accounts.
Grassroots Civil Rights & Social Activism: FBI Files on Benjamin J. Davis, Jr.
The FBI files on Benjamin J. Davis, Jr. that make up this collection were assembled by Dr. Gerald Horne, author of Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party, and the breadth of issues addressed by these records is astounding. Davis served as a leader in local, district, and national leadership bodies of the Communist Party USA and thus concerned himself with a broad range of organizational, political, and theoretical questions. There is news of organizing successes and failures at grassroots level, minutes from meetings held on all the levels on which Davis engaged, and reports from member-informers on all the major political and theoretical debates.
Evangelism in Korea: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Missions, 1884-1911
The American Presbyterian Church was committed at its inception to the belief that it is a missionary church and that every member is a missionary. The establishment in 1837 of the Presbyterian Church’s Board of Foreign Missions signaled the beginning of a worldwide missionary operation destined to embrace some fifteen countries in four different continents. The records offered here provide invaluable information on social conditions in Korea and on efforts to spread the gospel during the nineteenth century. Documenting the church’s educational, evangelical, and medical work, these are records mainly of incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the Board headquarters.
This publication comprises two collections, Records Regarding Bank Investigations and Records Relating to Interrogations of Nazi Financiers, from the records of the Office of the Finance Division and Finance Advisor in the Office of Military Government, U.S. Zone(Germany) (OMGUS), during the period 1945–1949. Records Regarding Bank Investigations, 1945–1949, consists primarily of memorandums, letters, cables, reports, exhibits, newspaper clippings, and civil censorship intercepts on the financing of the German war effort and German financial institutions. The records include reports on Nazi gold, the use of Swiss banks, and links between German and Swiss banks, inclusive of Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Golddiskontbank, Dresdner Bank, and Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft. The investigations contain information regarding Aryanization, bank operations outside of Germany, industrial ties, liquidation proposals, and the restitution of Hungarian property. Records Relating to Interrogations of Nazi Financiers, 1946–1947 consists of interrogation reports and transcripts, exhibits, and questionnaires. Names included are Bernhard Berghaus, Alois Alzheimer, August von Finck, Eduard Hilgard, Kurt Schmitt, and Franz Schwede-Coburg. Also among these records are files relating to Carlowitz & Company and Japanese firms operating in Germany.
Sukarno and the Army-PKI Rivalry in the Years of Living Dangerously, 1960-1963
The records in this collection cover the internal and foreign policies, personalities, and events in a pivotal period of Indonesian history. The charismatic leader of Indonesia, Achmed Sukarno, steered his country between the political machinations of the Army Staff and the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). These records consist of essential memoranda, correspondence, telegrams, memoranda of conversations, reports, and news articles, and cover all aspects of U.S. relations with Indonesia, Indonesian internal affairs, and Indonesia’s relations with its neighbors.
Finland: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs, 1960-Jan. 1963
The documents in this collection are primarily instructions to and dispatches from U.S. diplomatic and consular staff regarding political, economic, military, social, and other internal correspondences and events in Finland. Documents also include reports and memoranda prepared by the U.S. State Department staff, communications between the State Department and foreign governments, and correspondence with other departments in the U.S. government, private firms, and individuals.
Cambodia: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1960-1963
This collection provides a window into the political, social, and economic development of Cambodia, the rapidly maturing “modern” state in the heart of Southeast Asia. Traced here is the critical legacy of Prince Norodom Sihanouk (1922-2012), the nation’s controversial and paradoxical leader. Khmer nationalism, loyalty to the monarch, struggle against injustice and corruption, and protection of the Buddhist religion were at the forefront of developments in this period. The archive is an essential resource for the study of Southeast Asian history and the U.S. role in the war in Vietnam. The files are arranged according to the classification system of U.S. State Department Records, and they cover a wide range of internal political affairs.