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Social Justice Topics @ Pitt: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Resources

This guide was created to celebrate the life and legacy of civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Primary Sources are...

  • Original materials that provide direct evidence or first-hand testimony of a participant or eyewitness of an event or topic.
  • Primary sources can be contemporary sources created at the time when the event occurred (e.g., letters and newspaper articles) or later (such as, memoirs and oral history interviews).
  • Primary sources may be published or unpublished.  Unpublished sources are unique materials (e.g., family papers) often referred to as archives and manuscripts.
  • What constitutes a primary source varies by discipline. How the researcher uses the source generally determines whether it is a primary source or not.
 
This information adapted from Finding Primary Sources @ Pitt

1) Adding primary source-related keywords to your search will help you to more easily locate primary source materials. Keywords that can be used to locate primary sources are: 

sources    archives writings songs and music interviews
notebooks correspondence reports oral history

 

cases
personal narratives speeches images case study newspapers

2) Limiting sources to a particular date of publication will help you to locate contemporary sources published at the time of an event.

 
This information adapted from Finding Primary Sources @ Pitt

These materials are housed in the Archives & Special Collections Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Many collections featured here link to digitized content from these archival collections, so you can discover, read, and view from the comfort of your computer!

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