To help your students find content that meets the needs of the 2024 theme, PACSCL member institutions offer easily accessible digitized primary sources.
National History Day 2024: Turning Points in History
A turning point in history is more than just an important event that happened a long time ago. It is more than a new idea or a particular action taken by an individual. A turning point is an idea, event, or action that directly, or sometimes indirectly, causes change. Sometimes a turning point has immediate repercussions, making its significance obvious to people at the time. Sometimes, however, the impact of an event or decision or person is clear only in retrospect. Regardless of the topic selected, students must not only present a description of it, but also draw conclusions about how their topic affected individuals, communities, nations, or the world. Simply put, what was it like before the turning point? What was the turning point? What was it like after the turning point?
World War I, World War II, Korean War
Alumni War Experiences This site includes letters and other documents from the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, & the Korean War.
PMC During WWII Various documents and photos from the Pennsylvania Military College, the precursor to Widener University.
Civil Rights
George Raymond Papers This collection illustrates the history of the Chester Civil Rights Movement and Chester NAACP through scrapbooks and other materials donated by the George Raymond Family. Raymond was the President of the Chester Branch of the NAACP for nearly 25 years, including during the turbulent, and sometimes violent, civil rights protests of the 1960s.
La Salle University Special Collections
Vietnam War
Rick McCarty PTSD Drawings
In 1999, Rick McCarty of Mt. Vernon, Indiana, turned to art to heal the psychological wounds
from his combat experiences in Vietnam in 1971. Like many fellow veterans, McCarty suffered
from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a condition that causes victims to endure
nightmares, flashbacks, emotional numbing, anger and hopelessness as a result of living
through traumatic experiences, like war and its aftermath. Read an interview with Rick McCarty
online: https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnam_interviews/1/
Vietnam Generation (journal)
The Vietnam Generation journal was published between 1989 and 1992, and each issue was
devoted to a specific topic related to the impact of the Vietnam War on various groups,
including college students, soldiers against the war, African-Americans, Asian-American
communities, and women. Essays in the journal feature first-hand testimonies detailing the
impact of the Vietnam War on Americans.
Conflict and Counterculture: Finding the Visual History of the Sixties
An exhibit featuring digitized primary sources that visually depict the culture of the late 1960s,
including student counterculture. Sources include advertisements, video, and posters.