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

Let the Fire Burn Let the Fire Burn
Date: 1/1/2013Call Number: CD 865Format: DVDProducers: Jason OsderCollection: Compact discs and videos representing digitized copies of analog tapes
On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police dropped two pounds of military explosives onto a city row house occupied by the radical group MOVE. The resulting fire was not fought for over an hour although firefighters were on the scene with water cannons in place. Five children and six adults were killed and sixty-one homes were destroyed by the six-alarm blaze, one of the largest in the city's history. This dramatic tragedy unfolds through an extraordinary visual record previously withheld from the public. It is a graphic illustration of how prejudice, intolerance and fear can lead to unthinkable acts of violence.
House that Herman Built House that Herman Built
Date: 1/1/2013Call Number: CD 862Format: DVDProducers: Jackie SumellCollection: Compact discs and videos representing digitized copies of analog tapes
Herman's House is a portrait of a man who won't give up fighting for his freedom and, inevitably, a critique of a justice system that has confined him for decades in solitary--a condition that some decry as torture. The film is even more the story of an unlikely artistic collaboration that brought thousands of Americans face-to-face with the harsh reality of Wallace's confinement and went on to change profoundly the lives of both the Louisiana prisoner and the New York artist. New Orleans native and former Black Panther activist Herman Wallace went to jail in 1967 at age 25 for a robbery he admits committing. In 1972, he was accused of the murder of a prison guard, a crime he vehemently denies, and placed in solitary confinement in a 6-foot-by-9-foot cell in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola. Wallace was subsequently given a life sentence. Fellow Black Panther Albert Woodfox was also placed in solitary and then convicted of the same guard's murder. A third Panther activist, Robert King, was placed in solitary at that time though eventually convicted of a different murder. Together the three men became famous as the "Angola Three." Except for a brief period, Wallace has remained in solitary confinement 23 hours a day for 40 years, and he has never stopped protesting and appealing his murder conviction. Over the years, as doubts about the men's guilt accumulated--King was freed in 2001, and in February of this year a judge ordered the release of Woodfox--concern has also grown that Wallace and an estimated 80,000 other prisoners in the United States are being subjected to solitary confinement. In 2002, Wallace received a letter that asked an extraordinary question. Jackie Sumell, a young New York artist, wrote, "What kind of house does a man who has lived in a 6-foot-by-9-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?"
Let the Fire Burn Let the Fire Burn
Date: 5/5/2013Call Number: CD 871Format: DVDProducers: Jason OsderCollection: Compact discs and videos representing digitized copies of analog tapes
On May 13, 1985, Philadelphia police dropped two pounds of military explosives onto a city row house occupied by the radical group MOVE. The resulting fire was not fought for over an hour although firefighters were on the scene with water cannons in place. Five children and six adults were killed and sixty-one homes were destroyed by the six-alarm blaze, one of the largest in the city's history. This dramatic tragedy unfolds through an extraordinary visual record previously withheld from the public. It is a graphic illustration of how prejudice, intolerance and fear can lead to unthinkable acts of violence
The Black Activist The Black Activist
Publisher: Black Left Unity NetworkYear: 2013Call Number: Volume Number: Issue 1, SummerFormat: PeriodicalCollection: Various Black Liberation Movement Publications
Stand Together For Justice: Forging Unity of the Black Left, Justice For Trayvon Martin, Stop The War on Black America!, Black Workers For Justice, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Manifesto of the Black Workers Congress, On Our Sister Assata, On Our Brother Trayvon