Databases
- American History 1493-1945 This link opens in a new windowModule 1: Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
Sources from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York. Contains books, diaries, correspondence, newspapers, photographs, military documents, pamphlets, broadsides and other ephemera.
“The majority of the collection is unique manuscript. It is an extensive resource for scholars, educators and students and is considered one of the finest archives for material on the revolutionary, early national, antebellum and civil war eras.”
Module 2: Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945
Includes documents on slavery, the Civil War, and secession.
Web Sites
- African American Newspapers OnlineFlorida Agricultural and Mechanical University
- African-American OdysseyLibrary of Congress
- Anti-Slavery Collection, 1725-1911 (UMass Amherst Special Collections and University Archives)"The Antislavery Collection contains several hundred printed pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England, 1725-1911. The holdings include speeches, sermons, proceedings and other publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and the American Colonization Society, and a small number of pro-slavery tracts."
- Black Press Research Collective (BPRC)"The Black Press Research Collective (BPRC) is dedicated to generating print and digital scholarship on the Black Press."
- Black Women Oral History Project: Interviews of The Black Women Oral History Project, 1976-1981"[C]onsists of audiotapes and transcripts of the oral histories of 72 African-American women from across the United States. The interviews discuss family background, marriages, childhood, education and training, significant influences affecting their choice of primary career or activity, professional and voluntary accomplishments, union activities, the ways in which being black and a woman had affected their options and the choices made." Schlesinger Library
- Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-38Contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 b&w photographs of former slaves, collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Projects of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Maintained by the Library of Congress.
- Boston Public Library Anti-Slavery CollectionContains approximately 40,000 digitized primary documents. In the late 1890's, the family of William Lloyd Garrison, along with others closely involved in the anti-slavery movement, presented the library with a major gathering of correspondence, documents, and other original material relating to the abolitionist cause from 1832 until after the Civil War.
- Civil Rights Digital Library"The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement [in the 1950s and 1960s] by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale."
- Digital Library on American Slavery (UNC Greensboro)"The Digital Library on American Slavery is an expanding resource compiling various independent online collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface."
- National Archives: Black HistoryThe U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
- 1619 Project: New York Times MagazineNew York Times Magazine special issue re-examining slavery in the United States
- Digital SchomburgRelying on the expertise of distinguished curators and scholars, Digital Schomburg provides access to trusted information, interpretation, and scholarship on the global black experience 24/7. . . . [Contains] exhibitions, books, articles, photographs, prints, audio and video streams, and selected external links for research in the history and cultures of the peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora.
- The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade DatabaseExplore the Voyages Database, Assessing the Slave Trade interactive estimates page, and the African Names Database. Sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute (Harvard University), and Emory University.
- Civil Rights History ProjectThis site guides researchers to collections in several Library divisions that specifically focus on the movement as well as the broader topic of African American history and culture. The Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039) contains more than 1200 items consisting of born-digital video files, digitized videocassettes, digital photographs and full-text transcripts for all interviews. The interviews are also accessible through the Library's YouTube site and the NMAAHC website.
Related Research Guides
Search for Books
Keywords to include when searching for primary documents include: autobiographies, diaries, historical documents, letters, narratives, primary documents, or sources.
Selected Books (print and e-books)
- Major Problems in African-American History (E185 .M35 2000)