Note from Thomas Jefferson regarding the disposition of his Presidential papers, December 29, 1801

"Dated December 29, 1801, this letter from President Thomas Jefferson notes the lack of procedures or a "safe deposit" for his Presidential papers. His concerns were well founded. Before the advent of the Presidential Library system, it had been customary for Presidents to take these records with them as their personal property. The records were often passed from one generation to the next with little concern for their value to the history of the nation. Some presidential collections were well preserved by their heirs, but others were broken up and dispersed, or were partially destroyed..."
Presidential papers 

1950 Census Records

"On April 1, 2022, the 1950 Census records were released and are available free of charge.
Search the 1950 Census at 1950Census.Archives.gov

 

Taken every 10 years since 1790, the United States census provides a snapshot of the nation's population. Because of a 72-year restriction on access to the records, the most recent census year currently available is 1950.

On April 1, 2022, the 1950 Census was released, and users can access it for free through a dedicated website at 1950census.archives.gov. This population census is the 17th decennial census of the United States. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has digitized and is providing free online access to the 1950 Census population schedules for U.S. states and territories, enumeration district maps, and enumeration district descriptions.  

Bulk Download:  In addition, researchers can download the full 1950 Census dataset through the Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Registry of Open Data .  

How You Can Help

You can search the 1950 Census website by name and location. You can also search by Indian Reservation for form P8 Indian Reservation Schedules.

To develop the initial name index, we are using Amazon Web Services’ artificial intelligence / optical character recognition (AI/OCR) Textract tool to extract the handwritten names from the digitized 1950 Census population schedules. 

Because the initial name index is built on optical character recognition (OCR) technology, it is not 100-percent accurate. The National Archives is asking for your help in submitting name updates to the index using a transcription tool that is available on the 1950 Census website. You can help us improve the accuracy of the name index and make the records more accessible for everyone. More information will be forthcoming.."
1950 Census 

Donald J. Trump Presidental Library

"The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library is the 15th Presidential Library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), a federal agency. For information about accessing the records of the Trump administration visit Frequently Asked Questions..."
Trump Presidential Library 

CIA Releases Controversial Bay of Pigs History

"The CIA today released the long-contested Volume V of its official history of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which it had successfully concealed until now by claiming that it was a “draft” and could be withheld from the public under the FOIA’s "deliberative process" privilege. The National Security Archive fought the agency for years in court to release the historically significant volume, only to have the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2014 uphold the CIA’s overly-broad interpretation of the "deliberative process" privilege. Special credit for today’s release goes to the champions of the 2016 FOIA amendments, which set a 25-year sunset for the exemption:  Senators John Cornyn, Patrick Leahy, and Chuck Grassley, and Representatives Jason Chaffetz, Elijah Cummings, and Darrell Issa.

Chief CIA Historian David Robarge states in the cover letter announcing the document’s release that the agency is “releasing this draft volume today because recent 2016 changes in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires us to release some drafts that are responsive to FOIA requests if they are more than 25 years old.” This improvement – codified by the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 – came directly from the National Security Archive’s years of litigation..."

Bay of Pigs

Robert E. Lee’s Amnesty Oath, 10/02/1865

"After Confederal General Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops in April 1865, he promoted reconciliation. This statement reaffirmed his loyalty to the U.S. Constitution..."
Robert E. Lee

Sargeant Alvin C. York

"From the photo caption: "Sergeant Alvin C. York, 328th Infantry, who with aid of 17 men, captured 132 German prisoners; shows hill on which raid took place [October 8, 1918]. Argonne Forest, near Cornay, France., 02/07/1919 ".."
Sargeant Alvin C. York

Overturning the Racial Integrity Act. Decision, Loving v. Virginia, 06/12/1967

"In June 1958, Richard Loving, a white man, and Mildred Jeter, a black woman, quietly married in Washington, DC. They returned home to Virginia and woke up one morning with policemen in their bedroom. The Lovings were arrested for violating the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. 

Richard and Mildred were found guilty and sentenced to one year in jail, or they could accept a plea bargain and leave Virginia. So they left. But by 1963, they sought legal help and the case was eventually sent to the United States Supreme Court..."
Loving v Virginia

National Archives Unveils New Federal Register 2.0 Web Site to Mark 75th Anniversary
"...To mark the 75th anniversary of the Federal Register Act on July 26, 2010, the National Archives Office of the Federal Register (OFR) and the Government Printing Office (GPO) will launch FR 2.0 on FederalRegister.gov.

The FR 2.0 web site will be similar to a daily web newspaper, with a clear layout and new tools to guide readers to the most popular topics and relevant documents. The site will display individual news sections for Money, Environment, World, Science & Technology, Business & Industry, and Health & Public Welfare. FR 2.0 will have greatly improved navigation and search tools and will highlight each agency’s significant rules. The new web site takes advantage of social media and integrates seamlessly with Regulations.gov and the Unified Agenda to make it easy for users to submit comments directly into the official e-Rulemaking docket, and view the history of rulemaking activity through a regulatory timeline..."

History Museum or Records Access Agency? Defining and Fulfilling the Mission of the National Archives and Records Administration.
Statement of Wm. Clay Lacy, Chairman of the Information Policy, Census, and National Archives Subcommittee, Oversight and Government Reform Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Dec. 16, 2009.
"The purpose of today’s hearing is to examine the National Archives’, or NARA’s,
mission, and how it is defined and fulfilled. We will consider several important topics,
including the views of the new Archivist of the United States on NARA’s mission; learning
how the leaders of similar agencies, the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of
Congress, balance competing needs while fulfilling their core missions; and hearing the
opinions of agency stakeholders on NARA’s performance..."

Witness Testimony:
Prepared testimony of David S. Errriero, Archivist of the United States
Prepared testimony of the Hon. G. Wayne Clough, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution
Prepared testimony of Hon. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress
Prepared testimony of Ms. Anne L. Weismann, Chief Counsel, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington
Prepared testimony of Ms. Janet A. Alpert, President, National Genealogical Society
Prepared testimony of Mr. Kevin M. Goldberg, Legal Counsel, American Society of Newspaper Editors
Prepared testimony of Mr. Carl Malamud, President and Founder PublicResource.org

Social Media and Web 2.0 at the National Archives
"The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has launched some Web 2.0 technologies and has signed agreements to create NARA sites on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr. NARA is using these tools and sites to create new ways of communicating with the public and look forward to your feedback..."

CIA Inspector General Report Exposes Torture as U.S. Policy What were they hiding?A side-by-side comparison of the Bush and Obama versions of the CIA Inspector General report
"Today, the National Security Archive posted a side-by-side comparison of two very different versions of a 2004 report on the CIA's "Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities" by Agency Inspector General John Helgerson. Yesterday, the Obama administration released new portions of the report including considerably more information about the use of torture and other illegal practices by CIA interrogators than a version of the report declassified by the Bush administration in 2008. The report was first posted on the Web yesterday by the Washington Independent.

New revelations include:

Details on a number of “specific unauthorized or undocumented torture techniques” not mentioned in the 2008 release, including the use of guns, drills, threats, smoke, extreme cold, stress positions, “stiff brush and shackles,” mock executions and “hard takedown.” The Bush administration censured almost all portions of the document pertaining to specific torture techniques, save for a few references to waterboarding that omitted nearly all other contextual information.

A look at the legal reasoning behind the Agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and the development of Agency guidance on capture, detention and interrogation.
A brief discussion of the history of CIA interrogation, including the "resurgence of interest in teaching interrogation techniques" in the early 1980s "as one of several methods to foster foreign liaison relationships."

The conclusion that, while CIA interrogations had produced useful intelligence, the “effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained” is not “so easily measured.”.."

Archival Research Catalog
The Archival Research Catalog (ARC) is the online catalog of NARA's nationwide holdings in the Washington, DC area, Regional Archives and Presidential Libraries.