The Gordon Hall and Grace Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda focuses on printed organizational literature, often ephemeral, created for circulation among supporters or to persuade new supporters. The collection consists largely of pamphlets and leaflets, with smaller numbers of photos, audiovisual items, manuscripts, and monographs published by individuals and organizations representing a spectrum of social and political viewpoints ranging from the far-left to the far-right. These entities include the following broad categories: culture, education, environment, gender, international relations, government, labor, media, non-extremism, politics, publishing, race, religion, sexuality, social issues, students, and violence/militarism.

In 2022 the Divided America Project began to digitize letters, leaflets, pamphlets, posters, and other ephemera from the Hall-Hoag Collection. This active project will result in access to over 1 million items from thousands of organizations, making over 90% of the Hall-Hoag Collection accessible to researchers worldwide. As of January 2025, 243,672 images from 1,310 organizations are available in the Brown Digital Repository. The Brown Digital Repository does not include images of every document for each organization. The project does not include digitization of newspapers, books, serials, or audiovisual materials in the collection. To view all the documentation for a particular resource, in person researchers must request the original materials using information in the Hall-Hoag Collection Database.

Researchers navigate the digitized materials by using the organization and categories in “Refine your results” on the left or by conducting keyword searches. The digitized materials have undergone optical character recognition (OCR) conversion which enables keyword searching within the text of the documents. The Hall Hoag Part I and Part II Categories reflect narrow categories created by Gordon Hall (Part I) and broad categories created by library staff (Part II).

Additional Hall-Hoag resources for researchers include:

• Hall-Hoag Collection Database: Researchers intending to conduct comprehensive, in-depth research will find the database’s search functionality essential. The database provides information about call numbers, categories, and containers that are needed to locate the physical materials in the collection. Visiting the Brown University Special Collections explains how to request materials and make an appointment in the Special Collections Reading Room.
• American Conservatism Research Guide
• Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda, Collections A to Z
• Divided America: Religious Dissent & Freedom exhibit

Please complete the Ask Us form if you have any questions.

The Divided America Project received generous support from the Arcadia Fund and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).