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

Nov 1 Puerto Rico Rally San Francisco Nov 1 Puerto Rico Rally San Francisco
Call Number: KP 151Format: CassetteCollection: Puerto Rico
Nov 1 "Puerto Rico" rally in San Francisco in the late 1970’s. This rally was a part of an International Campaign to free the 5 Puerto Rican Nationalists who were incarcerated for their actions to free Puerto Rico from U.S. colonial rule. Two of these independentistas, Lolita Lebron and Oscar Collazo sent words to be read at the rally. Along with other speakers/performers, Lucas Demont of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party Nucleus, spoke about the revolutionary history of Puerto Rico, including the Nationalist Party's taking up of arms against US imperialism, the ensuing ultra-repressive US colonial occupation, and also the actions that lead to the incarceration of Puerto Rican Nationalists. Mary Ellen Polluck of the Puerto Rican Solidarity Committee explained the ways in which the US has turned Puerto Rico into a colony instead of the "free associated state" as it has been named. Also featuring performance by Nina Serano.