Today’s post was written by M Marie Maxwell, archivist in the Special Access and FOIA Program at the National Archives in College Park.
In the executive proclamation for National Black History Month, 2025, African American economist and prolific author Thomas Sowell was mentioned. Although retired from teaching, Professor Sowell does pop up here and there in the National Archives and Records Administration’s Catalog.
Before diving into the Catalog, let’s think about why he would be in NARA’s records. Because he is a youthful 94 years old, his military record and personnel records for when he worked at the US Department of Labor are private. But should Dr. Sowell have need for his records, he would reach out to our offices in St. Louis (military) or Valmeyer, IL (civilian). During the Ford Administration he was nominated to be a Federal Trade Commissioner, and for a post in the Reagan administration. Being an influential writer, his name could be captured by those quoting or citing him.
If you type Thomas Sowell into the search bar at catalog.archives.gov you will probably get over 11,000 results. Some of those results are related to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Also the other issue is that you will get results where ‘Thomas’ and ‘Sowell’ appear in the digitized document, but not necessarily near each other.
We can improve the search results by placing quote marks (“ “) around Thomas Sowell’s name. This reduces the results to 90. However, we’re still getting Revolutionary War results.
Let’s look back at Sowell’s life to narrow the dates to get better results. Thomas Sowell was born June 30, 1930 in Gastonia, North Carolina. He was adopted by his aunt who moved to Harlem in New York City as part of the Great Migration. In 1961 Sowell was an Economist for the Department of Labor. The year 1961 might be a good start date. However, if you are looking at when he was most influential, maybe start with 1971 when he published the first of many Economics: Analysis and Issues.
Going to catalog.archives.gov/advanced-search, under Keywords, searching All Fields for “Thomas Sowell” with quote marks, then going down to Date Search choosing 1961 for the From year and the current year for To, we get 57 results, most of them available online.
Many of the documents hail from the Ford Administration, in different collections held at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, MI. There is a short biography of Sowell circa 1976 in NAID (National Archives Identifier) 7343399. Sowell met with President Ford in February 1975 for a 12:35 luncheon-seminar (NAID 4684861) and spoke at a June 1976 White House press conference on the subject of bussing (NAID 7344493). He was nominated for the position of Federal Trade Commissioner on April 6, 1976 (NAID 7343394). However Sowell refused the nomination and so it was withdrawn (NAID 7345025) in July.
More and more digitized documents are added to the Catalog and the Catalog picks up the words. This could be a problem with large documents but there is a way to pinpoint Thomas Sowell in a wordy PDF. Looking at the Extracted Text and doing a Ctrl-F search for ‘Sowell’ we find his curriculum vitae or CV on page 11 of a 63 page document (NAID 282089468). Despite limiting the dates, a file item from 1951 appeared in the search results which show a 1952 Pfc Thomas Sowell in the Muster Rolls and Personnel Diaries for the U.S. Marine Corps. (NAID 193988764, images 344, 351, 458, 498, and 507).
For Sowell related records during later administrations, he is cited and referred to rather than being an active participant. His article “Are Quotas Good for Blacks?” is cited in NAID 135838006, and “Smugly second guessing,” in NAID 271800375. He’s mentioned in passing in NAIDs 135838460, 179030944, 118570038, and 323153230). It appears that he was part of a National Advisory Committee as one of many economists (NAID 135840670).
Hopefully this little exploration into NARA’s Catalog for Thomas Sowell has given you a better understanding of how you can look for persons or search for subjects and what you may find.