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The South: Culture and History

This library guide is designed for researchers studying any topics related to the South's culture and history.

Opposing Viewpoints about Southern Issues...

Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center offers arguments for and against current political and social policies and issues, including many debates related to the South such as gun control, death penalty, hunting, racism, education, the environment.

Journal Articles about Southern Politics

Academic Search Premier- Very useful for starting an article search. Contains citations and full-text entries from hundreds of scholarly and popular periodicals. 

America: History and Life- The premier database for secondary sources in American history, excellent for political research.

American National Biography Online- This database offers biographical essays on famous Southern political figures. It also gives you a short list of primary sources on that person.

Black Studies Center- Offers primary and secondary sources on African-American history.

Google Scholar- University of Alabama's portal for Google Scholar. Google Scholar is a special part of Google that only finds scholarly articles. As a UA student, you can access the texts of many of these articles by clicking the links that say "Full-Text @ UAlabama".

JSTOR- Contains thousands of articles from key journals in history, political science, sociology, women's studies, and African-American studies.

Government Documents

Government documents consist of anything published by the federal government as well as Southern local and state governments.  Documents can include laws, reports, manuals, court cases and much more.  The U.S. federal government is the largest publisher on earth, and Southern state governments also publish a lot of materials about everything from agriculture to education in the South.

American Presidency Project--public papers, election data, and other documents related to American Presidents.

CIA Declassified Documents Database--read declassified CIA materials, including files on clandestine operations!

Congressional--provides U.S. federal laws, bills, agency reports, and other government documents from 1789--1969.

Congressional Serial Set--"includes Congressional reports and documents as well as executive agency and departmental reports ordered to be printed by Congress. The Serial Set captures American life from the late 19th century onward from westward expansion, scientific exploration, politics, international relations, business and manufacturing."

FBI Electronic Reading Room--declassified FBI files on famous people in America, including MLK, Bobby Kennedy, Desi Arnaz. 

Foreign Relations of the United States--official government memos, plans, records, dispatches, treaties, studies, and other materials about U.S. foreign policy.  Gorgas Library also offers more FRUS materials in print, please ask for assistance. 

Google Uncle Sam--easy to use, this Google portal searches only government materials.  Mainly current materials, but there are some older documents.  

HeinOnline--read the Congressional Record/World (the official record of Congress), full-text of legal periodical articles, Supreme Court cases and opinions such as Brown vs. Board of Education, U.S. Attorney General opinions.

Making of Modern Law - "digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926. Excellent primary source material. Society and its changing morality can be studied through titles on the morality of the law. Discussion of cases, procedures and reasons for a change in the law, offer the historian a fascinating insight into attitudes, predominant prejudices and the manner in which society functioned."  You can research laws about race and gender in the South, for example.

Official Records of the War of Rebellion--read letters, dispatches, orders, battle plans, field reports, and other materials of the American Civil War.