Search Help

How does this work?
There are many ways to search the collections of the Freedom Archives. Below is a brief guide that will help you conduct effective searches. Note, anytime you search for anything in the Freedom Archives, the first results that appear will be our digitized items. Information for items that have yet to be scanned or yet to be digitized can still be viewed, but only by clicking on the show link that will display the hidden (non-digitized) items. If you are interested in accessing these non-digitized materials, please email info@freedomarchives.org.
Exploring the Collections without the Search Bar
Under the heading Browse By Collection, you’ll notice most of the Freedom Archives’ major collections. These collections have an image as well as a short description of what you’ll find in that collection. Click on that image to instantly explore that specific collection.
Basic Searching
You can always type what you’re looking for into the search bar. Certain searches may generate hundreds of results, so sometimes it will help to use quotation marks to help narrow down your results. For instance, searching for the phrase Black Liberation will generate all of our holdings that contain the words Black and Liberation, while searching for “Black Liberation” (in quotation marks) will only generate our records that have those two words next to each other.
Advanced Searching
The Freedom Archives search site also understands Boolean search logic. Click on this link for a brief tutorial on how to use Boolean search logic. Our search function also understands “fuzzy searches.” Fuzzy searches utilize the (*) and will find matches even when users misspell words or enter in only partial words for the search. For example, searching for liber* will produce results for liberation/liberate/liberates/etc.
Keyword Searches
You’ll notice that under the heading KEYWORDS, there are a number of words, phrases or names that describe content. Sometimes these are also called “tags.” Clicking on these words is essentially the same as conducting a basic search.

Search Results

Real Dragon Real Dragon
Date: 8/15/1971Call Number: RD 003Producers: Lincoln BergmanProgram: Real Dragon (Midnight Flash)Collection: “The Real Dragon” a news magazine including music and poetry
Lincoln Bergman reads "Midnight Flash" with focus on the civil war in Northern Ireland in 1971. News reports on other events of the world in August of 1971 include Uruguay's attempt to remove their president, the United States basketball team's loss to the Cuban national team, South Africa's continued protests against apartheid by proposing a bill to turn the U.S. companies in South Africa over to Black Africans, the United States continued to stall an NLF Peace Proposal in VietNam, the six year anniversary of the 1965 Watts Riot. Reading of a poem written by Charlie Cobb formerly of SNCC. Bergman also reports the crumbling of the Saigon government, and rebellion by war veterans at an Air Force base that was trying to appeal for benefits from the U.S. government. Other coverage of 6 Pitt River Indians forced off their land by Pacific Gas & Electric, and Chicano march at Folsom Prison in protest of prison conditions.
Francisco 'Kiko' Martinez COINTELPRO 101 Extra Footage Francisco 'Kiko' Martinez COINTELPRO 101 Extra Footage
Call Number: C 10 128Collection: COINTELPRO 101 Raw Materials
In 1973, Chicano activist and lawyer Francisco "Kiko" Martinez was indicted in Colorado on trumped-up bombing charges and suspended from the bar. He was forced to leave the United States for fear of assassination by police directed to shoot him "on sight." When Martinez was eventually brought to trial in the 1980s, many of the charges against him were dropped for insufficient evidence and local juries acquitted him of others. One case ended in a mistrial when it was found that the judge had met secretly with prosecutors, police, and government witnesses to plan perjured testimony, and had conspired with the FBI to conceal video cameras in the courtroom. Kiko is a lifelong activist and dedicated human rights attorney.
Ricardo Romero COINTELPRO 101 Extra Footage Ricardo Romero COINTELPRO 101 Extra Footage
Call Number: C 10 133Collection: COINTELPRO 101 Raw Materials
Ricardo Romero is a Chicano activist for immigrants rights who, in 1981, refused to testify before a Grand Jury, along with other activists, to provide information on the activities of political activist organizations. He is a lifelong activist for Chican@-Mexican@ liberation.
Cointelpro's Attacks Against The Chicano Movement Cointelpro's Attacks Against The Chicano Movement
Publisher: Freedom ArchivesCollection: Xican@
COINTELPRO may not be a well-understood acronym but its meaning and continuing impact are absolutely central to understanding the government’s wars and repression against progressive movements. COINTELPRO represents the state’s strategy to prevent movements and communities from overturning white supremacy and creating racial justice. COINTELPRO is both a formal program of the FBI and a term frequently used to describe a conspiracy among government agencies—local, state, and federal—to destroy movements for self-determination and liberation for Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous struggles, as well as mount an institutionalized attack against allies of these movements and other progressive organizations.