How does this work?

There are many ways to search the collections of the Freedom Archives. Below is a brief guide that will help you conduct effective searches. Note, anytime you search for anything in the Freedom Archives, the first results that appear will be our digitized items. Information for items that have yet to be scanned or yet to be digitized can still be viewed, but only by clicking on the show link that will display the hidden (non-digitized) items. If you are interested in accessing these non-digitized materials, please email info@freedomarchives.org.

Exploring the Collections without the Search Bar

Under the heading Browse By Collection, you’ll notice most of the Freedom Archives’ major collections. These collections have an image as well as a short description of what you’ll find in that collection. Click on that image to instantly explore that specific collection.

Basic Searching

You can always type what you’re looking for into the search bar. Certain searches may generate hundreds of results, so sometimes it will help to use quotation marks to help narrow down your results. For instance, searching for the phrase Black Liberation will generate all of our holdings that contain the words Black and Liberation, while searching for “Black Liberation” (in quotation marks) will only generate our records that have those two words next to each other.

Advanced Searching

The Freedom Archives search site also understands Boolean search logic, specifcally AND/+, NOT/-, and OR operators. Click on this link for a brief tutorial on how to use Boolean search logic. Our search function also understands “fuzzy searches.” Fuzzy searches utilize the (*) and will find matches even when users misspell words or enter in only partial words for the search. For example, searching for liber* will produce results for liberation/liberate/liberates/etc.

Keyword Searches

You’ll notice that under the heading KEYWORDS, there are a number of words, phrases or names that describe content. Sometimes these are also called “tags.” Clicking on these words is essentially the same as conducting a basic search.

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Browse by Collection

• 
  Black Liberation
  The Black Liberation movement grew out of the civil rights movement and was made up of many militant organizations dedicated to freedom for African-Americans, such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, and the Republic of New Africa.
• 
  Cointelpro
  This collection contains material on the FBI program COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program). This program served to disrupt, destroy and infiltrate many progressive organizations during the 60s-70s in the U.S.
• 
  Gender and Sexuality
  Contains materials from a number of sources focusing on gender and sexuality. The struggles described in these materials are not necessarily separate from larger struggles for liberation but specifically incorporate women's unique voices and perspectives.
• 
  Independent Collections
  Independent News Programs including The Real Dragon, Nothing is More Precious Than, Freedom is a Constant Struggle as well as the Colin Edwards Collection, the Struggle to Save the I-Hotel and Art Sato's In Your Ear.
• 
  Indigenous Struggles
  This collection features materials covering the centuries long struggles of Indigenous Americans to resist European imperialism and maintain their culture and autonomy.
• 
  International Liberation Struggles
  This collection includes numerous materials from revolutionary struggles across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
• 
  Latin America
  This collection contains materials from Central and South America and the Caribbean. Primary topics include the Cuban Revolution, the Sandanista revolution in Nicaragua, the Nicaragua-Contra War, the Chilean struggle for independence and US imperialism.
• 
  Chican@/Xican@
  Covers everything from challenging the legitimacy of the border with Mexico and farmworker rights to the struggles of the diaspora from Central and Latin America.
• 
  North American Social Movement Organizations
  North American social movement organizations includes anti-imperialist organizations in solidarity with national liberation struggles, anti-racist organizations, and voices from anti-war and environmental movements.
• 
  Palestine
  This collection includes a wide range of audio tapes and English publications about the Palestinian struggle for self determination, the colonization of Palestine and Zionism.
• 
  Political Prisoners
  Individuals imprisoned for their political beliefs, activities or affiliations, often associated with organizations or movements opposed to the racism and oppression of the United States government.
• 
  Prisons
  The Scope of this collection includes audio, video and a variety of paper materials all pertaining to prisons and the struggle against them. This is an extremely broad collection with a wealth of knowledge from voices inside and outside prison walls.
• 
  Puerto Rico
  Puerto Rico was invaded by the US in 1898 shortly after winning independence from Spain. An independence movement has thrived ever since that has reasserted a right to self-determination and an end to US colonialism.
• 
  Viet Nam
  This collection contains print and audio recordings about the Vietnamese struggle for self-determination against French and United States imperialism.

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