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

Winnie Mandela and the anti-Apartheid movement Winnie Mandela and the anti-Apartheid movement
Call Number: KP 048BFormat: Cass BProgram: KPFACollection: African liberation movements
(same as KP 048a) 1988 or 89: Alice Walker and Bernice Johnson Regan reading from Winnie Mandela’s autobiography, “Part of My Soul Went With Him.” Johnson reads the chapter titled “No Human Beings Can GO On Taking Those Humiliations Without Reaction.” Begins and ends in the middle of a sentence.
Winnie Mandela and the anti-Apartheid movement Winnie Mandela and the anti-Apartheid movement
Call Number: KP 048AFormat: Cass AProgram: KPFACollection: African liberation movements
1988 or 1989: Alice Walker facilitates a discussion between Paris Williams, Pearl Alice Marsh, Joyce Carrol Thomas, and Angela Davis about their thoughts on the accusation that Winnie Mandela’s bodyguards beat a South African boy. They discuss the media, racism, and sexism (sexism within the anti Apartheid movement as well as among Apartheid supporters). The tape starts and ends in the middle of a sentence.