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.

Death penalty

This collection contains materials related to the morality of the death penalty and its effectiveness as a method of punishment.

Documents

With the State Marshalling Resources to execute Teenagers, Can We Risk an Unfair Trial? With the State Marshalling Resources to execute Teenagers, Can We Risk an Unfair Trial?
Publisher: Death Penalty Focus of CaliforniaFormat: FlyerCollection: Death penalty
Flyer about concerns with the case People v. Polk in which two African-American teenagers are facing the death penalty.
Death Penalty Focus: General Information Packet Death Penalty Focus: General Information Packet
Publisher: Death Penalty Focus of CaliforniaFormat: MonographCollection: Death penalty
Contains reproduced articles and essays supporting the abolition of the death penalty.
The Case Against the Death Penalty The Case Against the Death Penalty
Author: Hugo Adam BedauPublisher: American Civil Liberties UnionYear: 1992Format: MonographCollection: Death penalty
Revised edition. The ACLU holds that the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantee of due process of law and the equal protection of the laws. Contents of monograph include: Introduction, Deterrence, Unfairness, Inevitability of Error, Barbarity, Retribution, Financial Costs, Public Opinion, Abolition Trends, Further Information.