Freedom Archives Search Engine

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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

5 Documents Found

Underground: The Life of a Political Fugitive

Date: 4/28/1973Call Number: KP 007Format: 1/4 7 1/2 ipsProducers: Nick EglesonProgram: WBAICollection: Anti-War

This is a story about “Tom”, who in 1969 burned the 1A draft records of 34 boards in Chicago, and how he lived on the run for the years following. The story is told through interviews with Tom, his family and various voices from his small-town Minnesota upbringing. Tom’s soft underground experience is very different from the experience of serious clandestine political groups of the time, but nonetheless informative. For example, Tom enjoyed freedom of white privilege, i.e. carrying no ID and hitchhiking in cars with busted headlights and carrying dope.

The Spook Who Sat by the Door

Date: 1/1/1973Call Number: V 224Format: DVDCollection: Videos in many formats – both camera originals as well as reference materials

In order to improve his standing with Black voters, a White Senator starts a campaign for the CIA to recruit Black agents. However, all are graded on a curve and doomed to fail, save for a soft-spoken veteran named Dan Freeman. After grueling training in guerrilla warfare, clandestine operations and unarmed combat, he is assigned a meager job as the CIA's token Black employee. After five years of racist and stereotyped treatment by his superiors, he quietly resigns to return to his native Chicago to work for a social services agency...by day. By night, he trains Black youth to be the vanguard & Freedom Fighters in an upcoming revolutionary struggle, using all that the CIA has taught him... This film was suppressed after its release.

Declaration of Revolutionary War & the Symbionese Program

Author: SLAPublisher: Bay Area Research CollectiveDate: 8/21/1973Volume Number: 21-AugFormat: CommuniqueCollection: Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)

This is a communique by the Symbionese Liberation Army that states what their goals are, details their political and military commitments, and a declares a revolutionary war against oppression.