Highlights
- 32 presidential messages issued during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration from 1933-1945, as well as 5 presidential speeches, including Roosevelt’s Second Inaugural Address, relate to banking, commerce, taxes, agriculture, weapons, employment, transportation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Volstead Act, drugs and alcohol, education, veterans, and more.
- More than 550 letters from First Lieutenant Sidney Diamond to his sweetheart document his experiences serving in the Pacific theater during World War II. Lieutenant Diamond was killed a few months before the war ended.
- 1710 letters between Sylvia Greenfield Weiner, her husband Morris "Moe" Weiner, who served in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, and Alvin Greenfield, her brother who was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps, describe basic training and daily life in the army as well as wartime rations and materials scarcity in Brooklyn, New York. Letters from Sylvia also describe her involvement with the CIO Industrial Council labor union and other political organizing efforts she was involved with.
- Nearly 150 World War II posters promoting army recruitment, war bonds, and wartime conservation published by the US Office of War Information, Department of Treasury, and several other government agencies.
- 109 photographs of the 58th bomb wing missions against Japan.
- 12 issues of a monthly publication of the Social Science Institute at Fisk University in 1944 and 1945 are entitled “Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations” and discuss Japanese internment and resettlement during WWII. The reports also discuss a wide variety of topics including employment, civil rights, health, housing, military, educational racial inequalities, Jewish refugees, anti-semitism, citizenship of American Indians, and racial integration at schools.
- 36 maps belonging to the War Department's Bureau of Public Relations dated primarily 1943-1944 pertain to updates of the military front throughout Europe, Asia and the Pacific Islands.
- A collection of 11 items include Japanese photographs, a naval strategy map, and propaganda relating to the Pearl Harbor attack.