Black Studies: Interdisciplinary Archival Research

Ad*Access

Search or browse over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Covers five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II. A project of the Digital Scriptorium, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920

Over 9,000 images relating to the early history of advertising in the U.S. From collections in the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University. Site also includes an advertising history timeline

AdViews

Thousands of television commercials from the 1950s to the 1980s.

The Advertising Archives

Database of over 100,000 searchable images. You can also browse by category

Life Photo Archives

Not just ads, but you can find them if you add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. The "Search LIFE images" box at the site itself does not seem to work.

Bettmann Archive

More than 11 million stock photography images. You can search by "advertisement" and your subject. For example, "advertisement train," or "advertisement japan* war."

The Living Room Candidate

Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2020.

Early Television Commercials.

From the Internet Archive.

Classic TV Commercials.

Another collection from the Internet Archive.

Digital Schomburg: Images of African Americans from the 19th Century

Search or browse a rich collection of images taken from the collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

The Library of Virginia: Portsmouth Photos

Includes the Lee F. Rodgers collection of approximately 1,600 photographs primarily of African American subjects.

You can also use Google Image Search to look for images of particular people or subjects.