November 18, 2020, marks the forty-second anniversary of the tragic murder and suicide of 918 people in the South American nation of Guyana—the largest loss of civilian life in a non-natural disaster prior to 9/11. The deaths included 913 members
The California Historical Society is pleased to announce that 4,467 slides and negatives from the Peoples Temple Publications Department Records have been digitized and are available for public viewing and research online. The photographs provide new visual documentation of Peoples Temple’s
Among our collection of Peoples Temple Publicity Department materials is a group of ruined photographs – some faded completely to white, others thickly scattered with flaking pigment, a few recognizable but chemically streaked and melted. These photos are relics of
The California Historical Society has just completed a year-long, National Historical Publications & Records (NHPRC)-funded project titled “People, Power, and Politics: Providing Access to Contemporary Social Movements Collections.” The project makes available for the first time some of CHS’s highest
Recently the California Historical Society, along with the Labor Archives and Research Center, hosted ten institutions for the third annual San Francisco Archives Crawl. The theme for the crawl was “The Histories of California in 10 Objects.” We selected ten
Recently we sat down with California Historical Society’s Research Librarian, Frances Kaplan, to discuss the rich stock of resources available to the public through the North Baker Research Library. The North Baker Research library is a “special collections library,” can
There is a church a block away from where I live. I go there to visit a tree. One of its branches has descended upon the earth, bending heavily from its weight; a forked stick helps support it and hold
Archives are full of poisons. I used to work in the archives of a medical hospital where we kept a jar for making radium water, and where someone once casually sent my boss a bag of insulation pads dusty with