Readex Announces Civil Rights in America:
From Reconstruction to the Great Society

A sweeping new archive of primary source material related to civil rights in the United States

February 17, 2016 (NAPLES, FL) — Readex, a leading publisher of historical collections, will launch an expansive new digital resource in March 2016. Civil Rights in America: From Reconstruction to the Great Society is a fully searchable archive of Congressional documents related to all aspects of civil rights in the United States, from segregation to women’s suffrage to discrimination of all kinds. “Civil rights is among the defining issues of American history,” says Jim Draper, Executive Vice President of Readex. “This valuable new collection gives researchers unprecedented access to official publications documenting the arc of civil justice in America.”

The primary source material in this collection includes publications and reports from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the executive branch, congressional committees, special investigations and non-governmental organizations, all digitized from the originals and combined in an easy-to-use database. Through both firsthand testimony and government-level analysis, this trove of largely untapped research material covers the issues and events of American civil rights as seen through the eyes of those who experienced and shaped them.

With a focus on the century beginning shortly after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, the collection includes varied perspectives on such topics as the Reconstruction Era, voting rights, race and education, impact of Supreme Court decisions, Civil Rights legislation, human rights and American foreign policy, worker’s rights, civil rights and free speech, gender and sexual discrimination, modern era civil rights issues and much more. “No other resource offers students and scholars such a range of civil rights material spanning more than 100 years of American history,” says Draper.

Civil Rights in America: From Reconstruction to the Great Society is an essential resource for gender studies, African-, Hispanic- and Asian-American history, sociology, political science, labor history and more. Among many other areas of inquiry, it will help researchers track the evolution of gender and sexual discrimination, analyze national and regional attitudes toward race and ethnicity, and trace patterns in immigration policy. “This collection provides countless new opportunities for fresh discovery,” Draper says. “Its release is a boon for any researcher interested in 19th- and 20th-century American history.”