Historical News - United States - Newspapers - Research Guides at The Florida State University

Select U.S. Historical Newspapers by Title

Note: Florida newspapers are listed together on a separate page dedicated to Florida News, Past and Present.

Atlanta Constitution (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Provides a unique historical perspective into the southeastern US of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to 1868. Current coverage 1868-1984.
Abbreviation: atlc
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1868-1984
Subjects: History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
Atlanta Daily World, 1931–2003 This link opens in a new window
One of the oldest and most successful Black newspapers in the twentieth century U.S. For more about the paper's history and editors, visit https://atlantadailyworld.com/about-us.
Abbreviation: adw
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1931-2003
Subjects: African-American Studies, History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
Birmingham News This link opens in a new window
The Birmingham News was the principal newspaper for Birmingham, Alabama, for much of the twentieth century, including the era of New South boosterism and the Civil Rights Movement. The News printed its final edition on February 26, 2023. The digital operation, AL.com, survives.
Abbreviation: birnew
Vendor: NewsBank
Coverage: 1947-2023
Type: Newspapers and Newswires
Chicago Tribune (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Provides a unique historical perspective of the development of Chicago and the Midwest in the 19th and 20th centuries. Offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to 1849. Updates vary, current coverage 1849–1996.
Abbreviation: chitrib
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1849-1996
Subjects: History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires

Freedom's Journal
All 103 issues of the Freedom's Journal have been digitized by the Wisconsin Historical Society and are on this website. According to this site this newspaper "provided international, national, and regional information on current events and contained editorials declaiming slavery, lynching, and other injustices. The Journal also published biographies of prominent African-Americans and listings of births, deaths, and marriages in the African-American New York community. "

Los Angeles Times (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Provides comprehensive coverage for Southern California's largest daily newspaper. 1881-1999.
Abbreviation: lath
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1881-1995
Subjects: History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
New Orleans Times-Picayune This link opens in a new window
The Times-Picayune has been one of the nation’s leading sources of news and a vital force in journalism for more than 150 years. Beyond insight into colorful New Orleans, the newspaper’s reporting has included exceptional coverage of Louisiana’s politics, culture and local industries. Renowned for its extensive state and regional focus, the award winning paper is also recognized for acclaimed contributors such as O. Henry and William Faulkner.
Abbreviation: timpic
Vendor: NewsBank
Coverage: 1837-Current
Type: Newspapers and Newswires
New York Times (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Offers full-page-images and article images from the New York Times newspaper from its first issue in 1851 to three years before the current date. This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand primary source accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
Abbreviation: nythist
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1850-Current - 3 years
Subjects: History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
Wall Street Journal (Historical) This link opens in a new window
The United States financial newspaper of record offering in-depth coverage of national and international finance as well as coverage of hard news. Updates vary, current coverage 1889–1999.
Abbreviation: wsjh
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1889-1999
Subjects: History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
Washington Post (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Includes coverage from 1877-2004.
Abbreviation: wphi
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1877-2004
Subjects: History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires

Database Collections of US Historical Newspapers & Magazines

Some newspaper databases collect around a theme, such as those dedicated to African-American newspapers. Others provide a wide range of titles from across the country with varying date ranges, such as America's Historical Newspapers.

If you are looking for a specific newspaper title, or newspapers from a particular city, try using OneSearch first to determine which database might include coverage of the needed resource. FSU may also have the newspaper you need, but only on microfilm.

Contact your subject librarian if you need help navigating the often complicated world of historical newspapers.

Accessible Archives This link opens in a new window
Includes several major historical newspapers including The Liberator (abolitionist paper, Boston, 1831-1865); The Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia, 1728-1800, owned by Ben Franklin 1729-1790); several colonial South Carolina newspapers (1732-1780); and a collection of nineteenth-century African-American newspapers (various cities, 1827-1909).
Abbreviation: aacarc
Vendor: Accessible Archives
Subjects: African-American Studies, History, Women's and Gender Studies
Type: Newspapers and Newswires
African American Newspapers, 1827–1998 This link opens in a new window
Provides online access to 280 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection, which includes papers from more than 35 states, features many rare and historically significant 19th-century titles.
Abbreviation: afamnp
Vendor: NewsBank
Coverage: 1827-1998
Subjects: African-American Studies, Communication, History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
America's Historical Newspapers, 1690–1922 This link opens in a new window
Searchable digital facsimiles of thousands of newspaper titles from all 50 states. With eyewitness reporting, editorials, letters, advertisements, obituaries and much more, this collection chronicles the evolution of American culture and daily life from the colonial era to the early twentieth century, with especially good coverage of the nineteenth century.
Abbreviation: eana
Vendor: NewsBank
Coverage: 1690-1922
Subjects: Communication, History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
Indigenous Newspapers in North America This link opens in a new window
Formerly American Indian Newspapers, Indigenous Newspapers in North America aims to present a diverse and robust collection of print journalism from Indigenous peoples of the US and Canada over more than 9,000 individual editions from 1828-2016.
Abbreviation: aminews
Vendor: Adam Matthew Digital Ltd
Coverage: 1828-2016
Subjects: Anthropology, Cultural Heritage, History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources, Newspapers and Newswires
American Prison Newspapers, 1800–2020: Voices from the Inside This link opens in a new window
On March 24, 1800, Forlorn Hope became the first newspaper published within a prison by an incarcerated person. In the intervening 200 years, over 450 prison newspapers have been published from U.S. prisons. Some, like the Angolite and the San Quentin News, are still being published today. American Prison Newspapers will bring together hundreds of these periodicals from across the country into one collection that will represent penal institutions of all kinds, with special attention paid to women's-only institutions. Development of the collection began in July 2020 and will continue through 2021, with new content added regularly.
Abbreviation: apn
Vendor: Reveal Digital
Coverage: 1800-2020
Subjects: Criminology and Criminal Justice
Type: Newspapers and Newswires

Atlanta Historic Newspapers Archive
Covers 1847-1922 and includes: Atlanta Daily Examiner, 1857, Atlanta Daily Herald, 1873-1876, Atlanta Georgian, 1906-1911, Atlanta Intelligencer, 1851, 1854-1871, Atlantian, 1911-1922, Daily/Georgia Weekly Opinion, 1867-1868, Gate-City Guardian, 1861, Georgia Literary and Temperance Crusader, 1860-1861, New Era, 1869-1872, Southern Confederacy, 1861-1864, Southern Miscellany, and Upper Georgia Whig, 1847, Southern World, 1882-1885, Sunny South, 1875-1907, and Weekly Constitution, 1869-1882.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
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Sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress

Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Ethnic NewsWatch includes current journals, magazines, and newspapers from ethnic and independent presses, 1973-present.
- African American/Caribbean/African
- Arab/Middle Eastern
- Asian/Pacific Islander
- European/Eastern European
- Hispanic
- Jewish
- Native Peoples
Abbreviation: ethnicnews2
Vendor: ProQuest
Coverage: 1973-Current
Subjects: African-American Studies, Asian Studies, Communication, History, International Affairs, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science, Russian & Eastern European Studies
Type: E-Journal Collections, Newspapers and Newswires

Independent Voices
An open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life This link opens in a new window
One of the darker chapters in American history and one of the lesser discussed events of World War II was the forced internment, during the war, of an important segment of the American population-persons of Japanese descent. This collection, consisting of 25 individual titles, documents life in the internment camps.
Abbreviation: jarc
Vendor: Gale
Coverage: 1942-1945
Subjects: Asian Studies, History
Type: Historical / Primary Sources
Publisher's Weekly Digital Archive (1872–2013) This link opens in a new window
Continuously published since 1872, Publishers Weekly has consistently been the authoritative voice for US publishing industry news and book reviews, with ongoing coverage of the British book trade. The complete archive includes nearly 200,000 book reviews, and bestseller lists from 1895 forward.
Abbreviation: pwda
Vendor: East View Information Services
Coverage: 18722013
Subjects: History, Library and Information Studies, Literature
Type: Biographies, E-Journal Collections, Historical / Primary Sources
Readers' Guide Full Text Mega This link opens in a new window
Readers’ Guide Full Text Mega is a database providing full text, indexing and abstracts for a broad selection of periodicals covering many subjects, including art, business, education and entertainment. It is ideal for educators, students and patrons seeking current events, curriculum support and popular periodicals.
Abbreviation: readers-gd
Vendor: EBSCO
Coverage: 1983-present
Subjects: Cultural Heritage, *General / Multi-Subject, History
Type: Citation Management, E-Book Collections, E-Journal Collections, Historical / Primary Sources, Indexes / Catalogs

Newspaper Digitization Projects by City or State

For Florida, visit the Florida page of this guide for a list of databases, digitization projects, and microfilm that include Florida newspaper content.

Birmingham (Alabama) Newspapers
1874-1901, from the Birmingham Public Library
California Digital Newspaper Collection
"A Freely Accessible Repository of Digitized California Newspapers from 1846 to the Present"
CARAT (Arkansas Historical Newspapers)
1819-present, from the Arkansas History Commission
Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection
1859 to 1923, from the Colorado State Library & Colorado Historical Society
Georgia Historic Newspapers
1763 and 2021. A project of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), a part of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries.
North Carolina Digitization Project
1751-1898, from North Carolina State Archives
Texas Digital Newspaper Program
1829-present, from University of North Texas
Virginia Gazette
1736-1780, from Colonial Williamsburg Fourndation
Virginia Newspapers
1785-2000, from Library of Virginia

TV News

American Archives of Public Broadcasting
Discover historic programs of publicly funded radio and television across America. Watch and listen. Includes nearly 15,000 episodes of PBS NewsHour and its predecessor programs from October 1975 to September 2019,
C-SPAN Video Archive
"The C-SPAN Archives records, indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses. Every C-SPAN program aired since 1987, now totaling over 160,000 hours, is contained in the C-SPAN Archives and immediately accessible through the database and electronic archival systems developed and maintained by the C-SPAN Archives."

Vanderbilt Television News Archive This link opens in a new window
The Vanderbilt Television News Archive began recording broadcasts on August 5, 1968 with the mission to create, preserve and provide access to the news broadcasts from the U.S. national television networks. The database currently includes over a million records, including abstracts at the story level of regular evening newscasts and catalog records for each special news report. Streaming video of NBC material, ranging from August 5, 1968 to the present and CNN broadcasts beginning in 1995 is available. Current material is not available until at least 72 hours after the original broadcast.
Note: Due to copyright considerations, not all VTNA records include online streaming video content. FSU does not have access to the video loan service. Registering for a personal account does not enable additional access.

Abbreviation: vantna
Vendor: Vanderbilt University
Coverage: 1968present
Subjects: Communication
Type: Indexes / Catalogs, Streaming Video