From communal struggle to creative outpourings: uncover the everyday lives of African Americans spanning two turbulent centuries with the new collection African American Communities. Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and communities in North Carolina this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.
Also featured is a rich selection of visual material, including photographs, maps and ephemera. The collection features archival material sourced from a collection of libraries and repositories including the Atlanta History Center, the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Richard Daley Library at the University of Illinois, and the Newberry Library (Chicago), among others.
The African American Historical Serials Collection features 173 periodicals spanning from 1816 through 1922. The periodicals in this collection include newspapers and magazines, in addition to reports and annuals from various African American organizations, including churches and educational and service institutions.
This collection was developed in conjunction with the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) as part of an effort to preserve endangered serials related to African American religious life and culture.
African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows scholars to discover the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
Online access to approximately 270 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. This unique collection features papers from more than 35 states—including many rare and historically significant 19th century titles.
Primary index to research in American and Canadian history, including social and cultural history. Includes abstracts (summaries) of journal articles. Limit by language, time period, and document type (articles, collections of articles, books, and dissertations).
This database includes information from individual soldiers' military and civilian experiences that can be used for statistical and analytical examinations of the Civil War.
This unique collection of primary source material documents American History from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century. Sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, Module I covers "Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859" and Module II "Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945."
This digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s extraordinary holdings of slavery and abolition materials delivers more than 3,500 works published over the course of more than 100 years. Long awaited in fully searchable form, The American Slavery Collection addresses every facet of American slavery—one of the most important and controversial topics in U.S. history. These diverse materials, all filmed in full-resolution color, include books, pamphlets, graphic materials, and ephemera; among them are a large number of invaluable Southern imprints.
Contains both primary sources and scholarly research on African-Americans, the wider African Diaspora, and Africa itself, including: the Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, the International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), the full text of the Chicago Defender, and the Black Literature Index.
Civil War Primary Source Documents from The New-York Historical Society presents unique manuscript material chronicling all aspects of the American Civil War from warfare on land, at sea, in hospitals and prison camps, and reactions and impressions of the War from the home front.
The collection, comprised of over 110,000 pages, focuses on the War as it was fought from 1861 to 1865 and represents both Northern and Southern perspectives. It also contains important contextual documents leading up to War and after its conclusion.
Fulltext collection of selected, Civil War era articles from the Charleston Mercury, the New York Herald, and the Richmond Enquirer, published between November 1, 1860 and April 15, 1865.
FBI records on leading African-Americans from 1920 to 1980, including Elijah Muhammed, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, Marcus Garvey, and others. Part of Archives Unbound.
Provides electronic access to all issues of Harper's Weekly (including all illustrations and advertisements) published between 1857 (first issue) and 1912, with the capacity to browse or search by date, by literary genre, and by a person's occupation
The nation's largest collection of oral history interviews of African American leaders, with over 3,000 interviews. Interviews are split into short clips for ease of viewing and searching.
FBI documents related to James Meredith, the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi. Meredith's admission sparked a wave of protests and riots, eventually quashed by Federal authorities. Files contain newspaper clippings, police reports, and letters Meredith received from around the world. Part of Archives Unbound.
Comprehensive collection of scholarship focused on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture, coupled with precise search and browse capabilities. Features more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field, over 1,750 images, more than 300 primary sources with specially written commentaries, nearly 150 maps, 150 charts and tables, and over 6,000 biographies. The core content includes: Africana: the encyclopedia of the African and African American experience, second ed.; Encyclopedia of African American history, 1619-1895; Encyclopedia of African American history, 1896 to the present; Black women in America, second ed.; African American national biography; Dictionary of African biography; The Oxford encyclopedia of African thought.
Amiri Baraka was a writer and activist who was one of the most significant voices of Black Nationalism. This collection captures many poems, essays, and other writings by Baraka, as well as newspaper clippings and articles about him. Part of Archives Unbound.
Contains nearly 2,000 slavery, anti-slavery, and Civil War pamphlets and the complete runs of eight regional newspapers covering 1840-1865. Cross-searchable with other historical newspapers and the American Periodicals Series.
Full text of the following historical African American newspapers: Chicago Defender, The Baltimore Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier, Los Angeles Sentinel, Atlanta Daily World, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, The Philadelphia Tribune, and Cleveland Call and Post. Click the "more" link below for direct links.
Digitized files and other documents from the African American Police League (AAPL), an association of African-American policemen working to improve relationships between the police and neighborhoods.
Acquired through a grant from the Resources Legacy Fund to honor Artemis G. Kirk, University Librarian Emeritus, for the library collections in the field of African-American, African and History of Slavery Studies.
Sourced from the Chicago History Museum, the African American Police League Records, 1961-1988, the collection contains annual and general reports, court files, fundraising items, historical information, minutes, correspondence, clippings, topical files, newsletters, police brutality files, and publications and flyers relative to the ongoing work of the African American Police League (AAPL) and its education and action arm, the League to Improve the Community (LIC). The collection also contains items on numerous law enforcement and civil rights organizations across the country; materials on the suspension of AAPL executive director Renault Robinson from the Chicago Police Department and related lawsuits; and materials pertaining to the National Black Police Association (NBPA).
This collection (spanning 1913-1965) documents the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's tireless and systematic assault on segregation and discrimination through the quest for Civil Rights and equal access across numerous fronts in American life: education, voting, employment, housing, and more. Comprised of internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices, the papers provide a first-hand view into the crucial issues facing African Americans in the 20th century.
The education files are particularly robust, detailing the Association's assault on segregated education that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, while the Armed Services portion provides an exceptionally rich documentary source on African American military service between 1918 and the early 1950s.
The NAACP Papers collections contains internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. It charts the NAACP's work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues. With a timeline that runs from 1909 to 1972, the NAACP Papers document the realities of segregation in the early 20th century to the triumphs of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond.
The NAACP Papers collection consists of 6 modules. Individual Modules include:
NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files
NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files
NAACP Papers: Special Subjects
NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces
NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Legal Department Files
NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses
Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records, Parts I-III document the far-reaching impact of plantations and slavery on both the American South and the nation. Curated from manuscript collections across the nation, the digitized records in this remarkable collection describe nearly every aspect of plantation life: business operations and day-to-day labor routines, family affairs, roles of women, racial attitudes, relations between masters and slaves, social and cultural life, as well as the fundamental tensions and anxieties that were inseparable from a slave society.
Part 1 features manuscripts drawn from a number of collections across the nation.
Part 2 is comprised of manuscript materials sourced from holdings at Duke University and the University of Virginia.
Part 3 consists of collections selected from the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill.
This resource consists of personal papers of African Americans and records of civil rights organizations. Among the collections in this module are selections from the Papers of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), Mary McLeod Bethune Papers, Records of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC),
Records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Bayard Rustin Papers, Claude A. Barnett Papers (which includes papers from the Associated Negro Press), Papers of A. Philip Randolph, Records of the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Papers of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.
Includes documents from the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives originally available only on microfilm. Includes:
Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition
Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World
Part III: The Institution of Slavery
Part IV: Age of Emancipation
Covering from 1490-2007, this collection of library and archival material spans the Atlantic world. Designed as both a teaching and research portal, the collection provides full-text, searchable access to thousands of original manuscripts, pamphlets, books, and paintings, while also delivering contextual essays by leading scholars in the field.
Composed of a four part Series of manuscript collections from Duke University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Historical Society, this selection of documents open a window into the slave's world that no other type of primary documentary evidence affords.
Acquired through a grant from the Resources Legacy Fund to honor Artemis G. Kirk, University Librarian Emeritus, for the library collections in the field of African-American, African and History of Slavery Studies.
Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries presents some of the richest, most valuable, and most complete collections in the entire documentary record of American slavery, focusing on the industrial uses of slave labor. The materials selected include company records; business and personal correspondence; documents pertaining to the purchase, hire, medical care, and provisioning of slave laborers; descriptions of production processes; and journals recounting costs and income.
