Featured Primary Sources

Sortable List of All Featured Primary Sources

Gilder Lehrman’s Featured Primary Sources draw from the wealth of letters, diaries, maps, pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, and photographs in the Gilder Lehrman Collection, a unique archive of more than 60,000 American historical documents. Each Featured Primary Resource has an introduction, transcript, image, and questions for discussion. You can access them within each Sub-era in the History by Era section of the website, or see the entire list below, filtering the results by Era, Theme, or Creator.

Title Yearsort icon
John Kennedy compares US and Soviet military power, 1953 1953
President Truman’s Farewell Address, 1953 1953
Don’t Buy a Ford Ever Again, ca. 1960 1960
John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961 1961
Ronald Reagan on economics and political parties, 1962 1962
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, 1963 1963
Lyndon B. Johnson proclaims a national day of mourning for JFK, 1963 1963
Robert Kennedy on civil rights, 1963 1963
George Wallace on segregation, 1964 1964
Ronald Reagan on the unrest on college campuses, 1967 1967
Robert F. Kennedy on Vietnam, 1967 1967
The United Nations and the international community, 1967 1967
Civil rights posters, 1968 1968
J. Edgar Hoover on campus unrest, 1970 1970
The end of the Vietnam War: conscience, resistance, and reconciliation, 1973 1973
President Ford’s remarks in Japan, 1974 1974
President Ford’s statement on pardoning Richard Nixon, 1974 1974
Proclamation pardoning Richard Nixon, 1974 1974
President Reagan’s First Inaugural Address, 1981 1981
Reagan Speech: “Tear down this wall,” 1987 1987
Christmas in Kuwait, 1990 1990
George W. Bush on the 9/11 attacks, 2001 2001
Discovering a mass grave in Iraq, 2003 2003
Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address, 2009 2009