See also: African American History
Online Primary Documents
- African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection"'African American Perspectives' gives a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909."
- African-American Migration ExperienceThousands of primary sources detailing African American migration over 400 years
- Black Abolitionists ArchiveCollection of black abolitionist speeches and editorials
- Black Archives of Mid-AmericaCollection of photographs and documents illustrating African American History in Missouri
- Blues, Black Vaudeville and the Silver Screen, 1912-1930sDigitized selections from the Douglass Theatre in Macon, Georgia
- Church in the Southern Black Community"The Church in the Southern Black Community" collects autobiographies, biographies, church documents, sermons, histories, encyclopedias, and other published materials. These texts present a collected history of the way Southern African Americans experienced and transformed Protestant Christianity into the central institution of community life.
- Digital HarlemProject depicts everyday life in Harlem between 1915 and 1930 using legal records and mapping
- Teenie Harris Archive (Carnegie Museum of Art)Collection of Pittsburgh Courier photographs by
Charles "Teenie" Harris that depict the events and daily life of African Americans from the 1930s to 1970s - Elijah Muhammad FBI FilesFBI documents on the Nation of Islam leader
- Langston Hughes FBI FilesFBI documents on the poet
- Civil Rights History ProjectThis site guides researchers to collections in several Library of Congress divisions that specifically focus on the Civil Rights movement as well as the broader topic of African American history and culture.
- Malcolm X Project at Columbia UniversityDigitized government documents, interviews and speeches
- Oral Histories of the American SouthIntegration is a major focus of these interviews. A large portion of the interviewees were students at West Charlotte High School during its transition from a traditionally black school to an integrated one. Other important topics include business and politics in Charlotte.
Race and civil rights are subjects that naturally appear across all five of the areas represented by these interviews; this group of interviews focuses largely on integration at Lincoln High School in Chapel Hill and the roles of African American employees at the University of North Carolina.
Finding Specific History Sources
Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience by ISBN: 9781578591923Publication Date: 2009-01-01This guide book profiles people, places, and events that have shaped the history of the black struggle for freedom.
Other Useful Databases
- Academic Search Complete (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Complete is a database of academic journals, magazines, and other scholarly resources, covering a wide range of subjects across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. It's a great starting point for research, especially with its inclusion of many open access publications.
- Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW) This link opens in a new windowPublications from Asian-American, Jewish, African-American, Native-American, Arab-American, Eastern-European, and multi-ethnic communities
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides comprehensive access to peer-reviewed scholarly journals, books, and primary sources from varies disciplines within the humanities and social sciences.
Black FirstsCall Number: eBookReaders will revel in the stories of barrier-breaking pioneers in all fields-arts, entertainment, business, civil rights, education, government, inventing, journalism, religion, science, sports, and more.