Freedom Archives Search Engine

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.

Cointelpro

This collection contains material on the FBI program COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program). This program served to disrupt, destroy and infiltrate many progressive organizations during the 60's-70's in the U.S. This existence of the program was discovered and made public after a break-in at FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania. The anti-war sympathizers had intended to destroy draft records but when they found evidence of a larger web of government repression, they kept the information and released it to the public. This sparked public outrage and resulted in Congress convening the Church Committee to investigate. While no government officials were ever held criminally accountable for the program and the subsequent frame-ups, assassinations and arrests, a number of civil suits were filed. The vast majority of our materials are drawn from two organizations, The Committee for the Suit Against Government Misconduct and The National Taskforce for COINTELPRO Litigation and Research. Both of these organizations organized around those imprisoned by COINTELPRO and distributed information about the program and its lasting effects on movements for national liberation.

The National Taskforce for COINTELPRO Litigation and Research lead the struggle to expose COINTELPRO attacks on the Black Liberation struggle. By educating and organizing, and by coordinating law suits filed by Assata Shakur, the Republic of New Afrika 11 and others, the Task Force is worked to expose the depths of government attacks and to free some of its major targets.

The Committee for the Suit Against Government Misconduct worked under the leadership of National Task Force for COINTELPRO Litigation and Research as part of the growing movement against government counterintelligence. Members of the Committee are plaintiffs in Clark v. USA, a major civil law suit against the FBI, Justice Department, Richard Nixon, John Mitchell and others. The plaintiffs have been named as targets of illegal activities for which ex-FBI officials have been convicted on criminal charges.