OCTOBER 18, 2011 (ALEXANDRIA, VA) -- Electronic publisher Alexander Street Press announces the addition of over 8,000 new pages and more than 1,000 new sources to its popular collection, The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960 to 1974.

The range of new materials added to The Sixties reflects the publisher’s commitment to providing affordable educational access to the highest quality primary-source content for scholarly research. For the first time, The Sixties contains materials from the Fred Hirsch Ephemera Collection at San Jose State University. Researchers will find among the fascinating items in this collection a “Free Angela Davis” protest pamphlet; a report on a community patrol set up to monitor abuse by police in low-income areas (published in the San Jose Peace Officers’ Association bulletin, The Vanguard), and a congressional district proposal to create an offshoot to the Democratic Party called the “Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.”

Fred Hirsch, a union activist and organizer, was a key player in 1960s civil rights activism and the materials from his collection are extremely valuable in the study of that time period. Among his many achievements, Hirsch wrote the first pamphlet exposing CIA machinations in the Latin American labor movement and participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project to help register African American voters in Mississippi.

“The immediacy of these documents is spectacular,” said Julie Miller, editor of The Sixties. “The Hirsch collection provides a window into the passion of the people involved in activism in the 1960s. You can feel the palpable suspicion of law enforcement in narratives like The Vanguard report, and see the passion and power of activists through the layout of the Angela Davis pamphlet.”

Along with the Fred Hirsch materials, archival documents from the Wilcox Collection at the University of Kansas and from Stony Brook University have been added -- The Sixties now contains more than 89,000 pages and over 4,000 sources.

More information on The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960 to 1974 can be found at http://www.alexanderstreet.com/products/sixt.htm. Qualified faculty and library staff may request a trial and pricing information for VAST or any individual video collections by emailing sales [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com ( sales [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com).

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About Alexander Street Press
Alexander Street Press is an electronic publisher of award-winning online collections for scholarly research, teaching, and learning. Our products are available to libraries and educational institutions worldwide via annual subscription or one-time purchase. Learn more at http://www.alexanderstreet.com.

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